


Chocolatey Goodness 17: Pillow Fighting

by Mad Poetess (mpoetess)



Series: Chocolatey Goodness [17]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Food Sex, Humor, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-21
Updated: 2001-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mpoetess/pseuds/Mad%20Poetess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everybody's ghosts catch up with them - and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wrong Side of The Bed

He heard his own name, felt it breathed across his skin. A faint, soft brush at his temple, like insect wings. Xander rolled to face his lover, seeing nothing in the lightless room, but there were cool arms close around his shoulders. Soft lips pressed against his, silently demanding entrance to his mouth. He gave it without hesitation, to the tongue that also spoke without voice. It whispered poetry against his palate in a language that had no meaning to him, held only the sound of falling rain, of water rushing over rocks, of movement and stillness. Some beautiful lie of Spike's, that Xander gladly accepted into his mouth, invited into his own body in tiny bites. Tentative little nibbles with his own blunt human teeth, at Spike's lips, at his chin, down his throat.

He could rip, tear, devour, could eat Spike up in an instant, if he allowed himself to think it. Or drink him down, drink in the words that Spike whispered and suck the vampire in after them, until Xander was full of everything. Rain and Spike and poetry and the dark, and he'd never have to let any of it go, if he was fast enough to catch it. Strong hands swept across his skin, and something was wrong with that, he was supposed to be winning something because of that, but he wasn't going to speak to say so. Couldn't shouldn't talk; there was some reason they had to be quiet as mice. He could only swallow his groan, as a leg was thrown over him, cool flesh pressed to his own heated groin; twin erections slid against each other, rubbing in the silence. Something not right, not right, but you don't think when you have this against your body, don't try to make it real, just take it for what you have, what you can get.

His own arms wrapped tight around the shifting muscles in that slim torso, pulling Spike to him as they each sought completion in the other. Sharp teeth in his neck, pain as silent as the rest, and oh yeah. He _wanted_ this. Wanted to give and take, until he lost himself in Spike. Found himself again in his reflection in Spike's half-glowing eyes. His own blood flowed warm from him to Spike, and Xander took it back with tiny sips at the blood-warmed mouth. Tasting himself, tasting Spike, feasting in nibbles. Stroking and pushing and flowing, and building until there was nowhere to go but up, thrusting against Spike and losing his mind.

All in the silence and the dark, with only the hush of his own breath, his own pulse pounding in his ears and---something else.

Something was there. Watching them. Something there in the dark. He peered out into the shadows that surrounded the bed, and thought he saw it move. The pounding pulse became a hammer in his skull as he sat up, reached for Spike's shoulder, pointed.

"S'all right," came Spike's voice, and a touch on his cheek. "I'll take care of it. I'll protect you."

Xander opened his mouth to say no, they would deal with it together-- you talk about its mother, I'll swing the helm axe-- but his mouth wouldn't work right, and Spike was up and gone before he could do more than squeak. Up and gone, diving into the darkness. Xander was alone in the bed. "Spike?" he was finally able to call.

Nothing, not even the echo of his own voice, but still that feeling that something was out there. He twitched a toe, then his whole foot, working up the courage to actually get out of bed and go look. The thing moved again -- a glimmer of wet silver-gray, against the black.

"Spike?" he shouted again. The presence disappeared, in an instant.

Xander sat up and looked around the room, blinking. Gone, whatever it was. Whatever it wasn't. Chased away by the sound of the alarm going off, shrill in the silence. Not by Spike, who wasn't there at all.

 

*****

 

Spike had made his way down to the screening rooms early in the morning, still half asleep on his feet even after what passed for a meal these days. Trying to play Watcher to his sleeping bedmate for the second night in a row hadn't done much for his own undead nervous system, and microwaved stolen-from-Sire cow's blood wasn't exactly the vampire equivalent of a power breakfast. He'd tried to stay awake after he sat down, not really relishing the idea of sleeping alone, but at last he gave in to his drooping eyelids, and nodded off in front of a scratchy copy of 'Forbidden Planet.'

He woke up to the feel of Xander smacking him across the back of the head with his hat, and found the video playing was one from halfway through the first season of 'Red Dwarf.' He'd been napping for a good four or five hours at least, according to the video schedule.

Spike shook his head, then smiled as Xander settled in next to him, smelling of soap and Old Spice deodorant and watermelon-and-pineapple shampoo. Eau de freshly-showered-Xander. He tried to concentrate on the videos, but it took him another two episodes before he was able to erase the fantasy of Xander, naked and streaked with foam, standing under the hot needle-spray, from his mind. Not to mention convincing Spike Junior, otherwise known as William-the-horny, that it could just bog off and leave him alone, because it wasn't coming out to play any time soon.

He covered his sigh with a yawn, as he glanced over at Xander. He'd had a moment this morning, had Spike, that had made him wonder if he deserved this, sitting next to him now. When he had woken in bed, his internal alarm attuned to the slightest hint that either of the girls were stirring, he'd seen Tara stretch and turn over in the darkness, wrapping her arm tightly around Willow, and he'd thought... The same sort of things he'd thought last night, really: that wistful human crap about wanting to lie easy in bed with Xander like that, in the same room as his friends, and not have to scarper away in the morning. _That_ wasn't the moment, that was the same sort of Angel-brooding he'd been doing for weeks.

But he'd bent to kiss the high forehead that lay on the pillow next to him, and _there'd_ been the moment. In that instant, he had known that if he did, he wouldn't get out of bed. If he woke Xander up, Spike would try to convince him to stay there, tough it out, face the consequences, tell them the truth. It was tempting, and he'd almost done it. Almost asked. He'd brought his lips within an inch of Xander's skin, before he pulled back. He'd slid out of Xander's arms and out of bed, and settled the covers back over him. Grabbed his boots and a bag of blood, and slipped out the door. Because he was a coward, at heart, and he was afraid of what the answer would be.

"We've seen this one before-- let's go... do something." Xander's voice was soft now, maybe a bit whiney, in Spike's ear, bringing him back to the dark, almost empty function-room and the sound of someone singing about goldfish bowls eating her toes, coming from the speakers.

"Do what, 'xactly?" Spike stalled.

"Anything." Xander shifted in his chair. "Well, murder, mayhem, and sex are pretty much out, but anything else," he corrected, with something between a glare and a grin.

"Which leaves what -- lightsaber fights?"

Xander shrugged, tapping his foot off-rhythm on the floor, and Spike resisted the urge to join him. One obsessive-compulsive episode at a time was enough, thanks. The boy had been...antsy, since he'd gotten here. Couldn't quite sit still, much like a certain unbleached vampire back in his wild-child days.

Spike could have suggested they check the convention programme for an activity non-geeky enough that they could both keep their rapidly-dwindling dignity about them, but the thing of it was, he didn't _want_ to go do something. Now that he'd managed to relax, he was having something frighteningly close to a good time. Just watching with his lover as two men on a ship the size of a small planet still managed to drive each other crazy, and pointedly not drawing parallels. No biting, no fighting, no shagging, just sitting there, centimeters of wooden chair-arm between them, human and vampire, being together, sort of. He was reasonably sure it would get him booted out of the Legion of Supervillains if anyone ever found out, but it was something near to right. So damned close. A touch away.

So he kept his mouth shut as Xander fidgeted, and tried not to fidget, himself. He watched as the dredlocked figure on the movie screen attempted to play guitar, one booted foot propped up on his bunk, grimy t-shirt and boxer shorts his only attire. Enough dirty clothes to make up for several million years in suspended animation lay scattered across his bunkroom floor. Dave Lister, the last living human in the universe, and he had to have the same flair for interior decorating as Spike's erstwhile basementmate. Similar taste in sleepwear, too.

"Did you..." Xander said suddenly, then shook his head.

"What?" Spike glanced away from the caterwauling actor.

"Nothing. I just... Did you find a microwave for your blood?"

"Yeah, there's a little vending place round the corner from the gift shop. Drank it straight outta the bag, in full gameface, and nobody batted an eye. 'Cept some dink in a Forever Knight t-shirt, wanted to know who did my make-up. Told him I didn't _wear_ make-up, besides the occasional bit o' black nail varnish, and all 'e did was compliment me for stayin' in character. Nutters, the lot of you."

Xander nodded, but didn't say anything further. Spike yawned again, then nonchalantly stretched his arms, one of which then fell back down, still nonchalantly, around Xander's shoulders. Which was why Spike really didn't want to leave, but there was something a bit unmanly, somehow, about explaining that you just wanted to cuddle in the dark, and was that all right. Just for a minute, where nobody could see.

A bark of laughter from his lover, a bit sharp, like maybe he'd caught on to the fact that Spike was pretending this was a real theatre. Sans the eating of the usherette and hysterical screaming when the dancing hot dogs came on that had always accompanied a movie date with Dru, of course. "Oh subtlety, thy name is Spike. Were you planning on holding hands in the popcorn bucket, too?"

Yup, totally onto him. Bugger. "No, seeing as we haven't got one. Got M&amp;M's, though." If nothing else, distract 'em with chocolate.

Xander paused, then, after a second, held out his hand, and Spike happily placed a crumpled paper sack of clicky-clacky candies there. Happily, because Xander hadn't shaken off his arm. After a few seconds of silence-- punctuated by Lister attempting to actually sing as he played guitar, and Spike being reminded that there actually was someone in the world more tone-deaf than his Sire-- Xander tapped him on the wrist. "Why are all these M&amp;M's blue?"

" 'Cos I don't like the blue ones. They're all yours, crunch away."

"Spike, it's food coloring. All the colors taste the same."

"Didn't say they taste different, I said I don't _like_ them. There's something inherently wrong with bright blue M&amp;M's. Contrary to the natural order of the universe."

"They have blue Smarties; I've seen 'em."

"That's different. Always been blue Smarties. This M&amp;M thing is just _wrong_."

"You do realize you're deranged, right?"

"It's been pointed out to me. So, you want to hold hands in the M&amp;M bag?" _La la la la, I'm a grown-up, hardass vamp, and I did not just ask my human lover if he wants to have middle-school finger-sex in a paper bag. Yes, you did. Oh, sod off, you._

Snort. "You _are_ kidding, right?"

"Of course." Of course he was.

Xander was quiet for a second. Then he said -- as if he were figuring out a complex mathematical problem that someone had set him, and it had nothing to do with Spike having just made a complete wet noodle out of himself-- "Aside from the logistical impossibility of both of our hands fitting in there at the same time--which is on par with trying to make out in the back seat of a Neon-- they lie when they say those things don't melt in your hands. We'd get chocolate all over 'em."

_And there's a problem with this?_ But at last Spike ventured, slowly, unsure of the answer he'd get, "Could just hold hands, then, if you like."

More silence from his lover, while on the screen Lister's holographic bunkmate threatened to do nasty things to him with various parts of that guitar if he ever played it again. Finally, a warm hand found Spike's, brushing it tentatively where it lay across the seatback, then lacing the fingers through his. "This isn't classified as groping or fondling, right?" Xander asked quietly.

He grinned, wondering if he should say yes, and start an argument about having won their no-shagging bet, and could they find a nice quiet closet somewhere so he could celebrate... Perhaps they could ring up Cordelia, who probably knew all the convenient broom-cupboards in the L.A. area. But he decided against it, the strange, sweet feel of Xander's hand in his somehow more important right now than snarking about, no matter how much fun he might have. "Nah. This is more like snuggling, with vague hints of light petting. Nothing you couldn't do on a Sunday School field trip."

Yet more silence. Awkward silence, as if snuggling were the sort of thing that was only allowed at home in the basement of doom. Or under the covers. Occasionally in the car. Never to be mentioned out loud in the daytime, in L.A., even in a darkened room. And yeah, he was nineteen, and yeah, he wasn't out to the world, and yeah, they were both grrr-arrgh manly men, but... But Spike thought too much about shit like that, he did. Let it go, let it be, take it as it comes.

What came was Xander's fingers slipping from Spike's, eventually. Falling gently onto his lap. Spike's arm tightened around the wide shoulders, as if he could protect Xander from something he couldn't even see or smell or name, much less kill. Reflex. Couldn't help it. Hated the squirming that followed, but he just had this feeling that if he let go...

"You're getting awfully up close and personal, y'know, " Xander informed him, shifting a bit, but not breaking out of the embrace. "For somebody who's supposed to be worrying that I'll start dressing him up like Lister if he loses this my-hormones-don't-rule-me bet." Not quite breaking away, though he pulled against Spike's arm for a moment, then, with a soft, untranslatable sigh, curled in against him. "Or maybe you'd prefer the Rimmer look," he mused quietly. "We could get you a nice kinky little uniform complete with fake medals. Even a nametag that says 'Second Technician Spike, BSC.' For 'blood-sucking-certificate.'"

"Beats going about having people think I'm William Harris. No offense, but I don't think I'd fit in at your family's little Fourth of July reunion." Spike fingered his name badge absently with his free hand. "I'll wear the badge, if you like, but no uniform. I look horrible in khaki."

Xander snerked. "And olive drab-- you're right, military guy, you're not. Still, it's not like Rimmer wears that outfit through the whole series."

"No, it gets worse. At some point there's blue sequins involved, if I remember rightly. Blecch. I've got more fashion-sense in my left bollock than that whingey little git does in his whole body."

"And you wonder why I don't want you picking out my clothes, if that's where you store your fashion sense? Still, if it makes you feel better..." Xander addressed the screen. "My undead roomie's better dressed than yours is, nyah-nyah..."

"Hmm. You think Rimsey and Listey are shagging, too?"

Utter, echoing silence, while they contemplated the mental picture. "Eew," came the eventual whisper, and Spike silently agreed, wondering what had prompted him to dredge up _that_ image. _No comparisons, remember? _"I like his tattoo, though," Xander said after a while. "I think we should do that for vampires. You all get a big V in the middle of your foreheads. Then everybody'll know who to stake, and Buffy can retire and have a normal life."

Spike snickered. _How would Angel manage to comb his hair over it? 'Cos you know he'd try to._ Then he thought about the Slayer collecting an old-age pension, and snickered a bit more. "She'd be dead in a month. Sheer boredom. She gets her grapefruits squeezed by killing things, luv. Without us around, she'd have to find something else. Evil puppies, maybe. The occasional unsuspecting vampiric sheep."

Xander twisted halfway out of his grasp. "Buffy's not like that. She does it because it has to be done, not because she gets off on it somehow. She didn't even want to be the Slayer anymore, when she first came to Sunnydale. Tried to blow Giles off until people started getting killed right in front of us. "

_Ahh, but she's thrown herself into it, hasn't she? Gone for the gusto. Can't tell me her knickers don't go all warm and wet at the thought of a good roll in the graveyard dirt with one of us. I've seen it._ Been it, even. But say that, and he'd set off the war to end all wars, which was exactly what he _didn't_ want to do. So aloud, Spike merely whispered, "Keep tryin' to protect her, don't you. All of 'em. Always cover their backs, even if it's just their reputations at stake, so to speak."

"They're my friends. Of course I do. They care about me, too, you know."

"Wasn't sayin' they don't." Just that they forgot, sometimes, that the boy was there, and looking out for them. Just that they didn't see how much he needed looking after, himself. "Just wonderin' who covers _your_ back. Who keeps _you_ safe at night, besides me." Allowed to mention that? Acknowledge that much about last night or the fifteen nights before? Even if he couldn't bring himself to say out loud that the same thing was true in reverse? Or maybe he should, after all...

Apparently not, because he didn't get the chance. Xander pulled away completely, with a quick little jerk. "Amazingly," he said coolly, "I managed to make it through the evenings all by my little self for the last nineteen years. Even stopped sleeping with a teddy bear when I was twelve. Possibly because my dad chucked him out the car window, but I choose to believe it was a mature, responsible decision on my part."

Xander stood and walked a few rows away, then slumped down into a chair near the wall. Spike smacked his forehead with his palm a few dozen times. "Hey Dave," he muttered. "Got any pithy relationship advice for the guy who's dating your alter ego?" On the screen, Third Technician Lister responded by trimming his toenails with his teeth.

*****

Xander leaned his head against the wall, and tried to feel the coolness, through the throbbing in his skull. His head hurt.

He should have known it would be a crappy day, from the start. It was raining. He'd woken up alone, feeling nasty. Hardly the first time that had happened, considering the jobs he'd worked and his Slayerette activities, but it hadn't happened in the last two weeks, so it was a little disconcerting. Especially since this was a different kind of nasty from 'Don't touch me, I worked two shifts, I stink and I have the Morning Breath from Hell' kind of nasty. This was 'touch me and I'll bite your head off' nasty. As Willow's alarm clock could testify, if it weren't lying across the room in at least three pieces. He'd have to buy her a new one-- preferably one that didn't sound like a rooster crowing when it went off; he'd blinked his gaze around the empty bedroom for nearly five cock-a-doodle-do's before he was absolutely sure he wasn't being attacked by Foghorn Leghorn, despite what his ears and his sleepy brain, and his pounding skull were trying to tell him.

As he showered, then dressed in a comfortably familiar plaid shirt that Spike would undoubtedly make barfing noises over, Xander had grumbled to himself. Just a little. He was well aware that Spike couldn't have stayed in bed with him until the morning light-- such as it was, what with the pissing rain outside-- gave them away. _But he could at least have woken me up, given me a good-morning smack on the ass or something, before he snuck out the door like I'd just hired him for the night._ Xander knew that wasn't true, though; Spike had just been looking out for him. Looking out for them both. Somehow that didn't make him feel any better.

The girls had taken off too, though he could hardly blame _them_ for not knowing he didn't like to wake up alone. Willow had left him a note asking if he and Spike wanted to meet them for lunch, but he'd been half-tempted, after reading the cheery message, not to show up. Not because he didn't want to see them. Just because he still felt nasty. Like he might say something he'd regret, if he did. Though he couldn't think of anything he could possibly end up arguing with Willow about, much less Tara, who never said anything anyway.

He'd grabbed his detective-hat from the coatrack as he was going out the door, and held it in his hands as he walked, since he didn't want to put it on his still-damp head. "Xander the Dick," he sneered. "Allegedly hunting down alleged Bad Guys who allegedly want to kill somebody who's already dead, and can handle himself just fine without you. Which is why you're at a science fiction convention allegedly bodyguarding two more people who can handle themselves just fine without you, instead of helping Angel. Not _really_ hunting down anything except Spike, and maybe Jeri Ryan's autograph. But at least you can use the word 'allegedly' properly in a sentence, thanks to your many years of training at the Darkwing Duck Syndicated School of Detection."

His many years of training hadn't done a hell of a lot for his attention to detail, apparently, because he was three strides past Room 1217 by the time he registered that he'd seen smoke pouring out from under the door.

His mind raced for a second, trying to jump out of the Self-Pity track and onto the Hero one. _Split-second decision, Harris. What would Buffy do?_ Buffy would kick the door down, run in, and rescue whoever was inside. The little Willow-voice in his head said calmly, 'Remember that speech Giles is always giving us about there being one girl in all the world, a Chosen one, with the strength and skill, blah, blah, blah?'-- _Um, yeah?_ \-- 'You're not that girl.' -- _Thanks for clearing that one up, Wills._ But his mind-Willow had a point-- solid oak door-busting not usually in the Xander Harris repertoire.

"But even Xander Harris can pull a fire alarm," he babbled aloud. "If he can find it."

He'd spotted the little red box on the wall and was reaching for it, when he heard a woman laughing, quite nearby. "That won't be necessary," she said, "but I'm sure the hotel would thank you for your civic-mindedness, if there were an actual fire."

Xander turned around. A small, black-haired figure in jeans and a convention t-shirt stood where the smoke had been roiling a few seconds ago. The gray smoke was gone, and hadn't left any scent of burning behind it. _Spike_ would have known it wasn't a real fire, just from that. Of course, Spike would have recognized her sooner, too. His brain finally kicked into what something like working order.

"Ah. Hey. You're Spike's friend, right? Which, you'll pardon me saying, sounds about as weird as 'Spike's sense of fair play,' or 'Spike's Guide to Clean Living.'"

The Asian woman --former woman, Xander reminded himself, though she looked solid enough now -- laughed again. "Quite. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call us 'acquaintances who never felt any particular desire to kill each other.' I think that was Spike's term for it. You are...Alexander, was it?"

He wasn't sure if he was flattered by the fact that she remembered his name, or disturbed. "Yeah. I usually go by 'Xander'. And your name's Rei, right? Rei-something, Rei-something, but, ah, not sure which came first, the something or the something. Sorry."

"It scarcely matters; Spike was quite right in implying that I chose them both for myself. 'Reikawa' means ghost of the river, as he said. Reikoku has a few different meanings, depending on how you spell it." Her tone was matter-of-fact. Polite, on the edge of friendly. Like she was the kind of person you met at a bus station and struck up a conversation with because she seemed like a safer bet than the knuckle-draggers in the football uniforms or the scary-looking wino with the waist-length beard and the unidentifiable stains on his coat. "It meant 'relentless' when I chose it," she continued, " but I was something of a pretentious thing, in those days."

"When you knew Spike?" Xander asked, in spite of his sincere lack of desire to spend more than a few seconds in her company. Because despite her relaxed, conversational tone, she was _freaky_. Just sent little chills up his spine, and not the good kind.

"No, a good two centuries before I had the dubious honor of becoming, as you say, friends, with Supaiku."

The creepy smile lost some of its creep-factor, became almost human, when she said Spike's name that way. He could hear something nostalgic and fond, in her voice, despite the words. Maybe that was it. This was someone who knew Spike when, and didn't carry the kind of still-love-my-Sire baggage that Angel did. It was the only explanation Xander could come up with for why he hadn't made his goodbyes and headed off to shiver reflexively, someplace where she couldn't see him. That, and wondering if whoever was in Room 1217 was okay...

She caught his glance at the door, and smiled directly at him. Oh yeah, _there_ was the creepiness. "Worried about my breakfast companion? You _are_ amusing. "

"Yeah, that's me. Missed being Official Class Clown by three votes, and that was just 'cause Jack Mayhew actually _campaigned_ for it. Handed out rubber chickens and novelty condoms. _Should_ I be worried about whoever's in there?"

Rei shook her head. "The man is a Hollywood talent agent. Here for his own enjoyment, to take his mind off his own failing business for a weekend. So what does he dream about? Turning away the wrong client; being laughed at by a board of studio executives. If nightmares were your sort of food, you could pick his up at a drive-thru. Fifty billion served, in this city." When Xander gave her an uncertain look, she waved a hand at the door. "He is sleeping peacefully; you're welcome to confirm it for yourself, if you like."

He did like, as a matter of fact. The ghost faded to nothing when Xander knocked on the door, leaving him alone to stammer an apology about it being the right room, wrong floor, to the tired-looking, fuzzy-haired guy who answered it. When that door was slammed shut after a few pointed comments about Xander learning how to read, he walked off, muttering again, hoping some of the red would fade from his face by the time he found Spike.

"You're a knight errant!" Rei's voice laughed in his ear. She reappeared in front of him, floating a few inches off the floor as he stalked towards the central opening where the hallways came together and the elevators lived. She looked more amused than ever. "How rare; no wonder your witch friends didn't want to sell you."

Xander blinked, his memory pulling the 'I've slept since then' trick on him. _Sell... oh yeah. She offers to buy me as a pet, they say I'm theirs. Sweet, girls, but she hasn't been haunting a cave for the last hundred years. She was kidding. I hope._ Just in case, though... "They were just being silly, you know. They don't actually own me, or anything."

"Yes, I did realize that." He flushed again, under her dark-eyed scrutiny. "They admire your bravery, but they do not have much confidence in your self-preservation skills, do they. That would be why they hired Spike."

Blinking seemed to be Xander's new facial tic, since his eyelids were doing it without any instructions from him. "Uh...hired Spike... for _me_? What on earth makes you think that?"

"Well, he certainly wasn't acting concerned for _their_ safety last night, nor does anyone of the power-level that they project, require his protection, whatever they might have said. There is nothing at this hotel that could harm them, including me. But Spike could not have been more obvious about his stewardship of you had he stepped in front of you and growled at me. I'm surprised he didn't; surely it would have impressed his employers more than that awkward display of pretending not to be concerned about you. And it's his way, when he is...looking after someone-- growl and claw and bite. Effective, if less than subtle."

So... Xander tried to put together what she was saying. She thought Spike had been trying to _defend_ him? By putting him down? It almost made sense-- Spike liked to show off his Big Bad-ness. Like killing two overgrown demonic skinheads on Friday, because one of them had laid a hand on Xander. But he couldn't go all fangy on Rei with the girls there; all he could do was pretend he _didn't_ care, in hopes of making a potential danger less interested in poor, defenseless Xander.

He should be flattered, right? He'd been flattered by Spike fighting and killing things for him, by Marianne the ghostly waitress telling him that the vampire out there in the diner's parking lot was having a pissing war over Xander Harris. So why did it just bug the living hell out of him to hear it from this other ghost, this friend of Spike's? That was the part that didn't make sense. Unless it was the fact that she was harmless. According to Spike. According to what he'd just seen. _Not_ a potential danger. Harmless, harmless, harmless, just like Xander, who apparently was so harmless that he needed to be protected from _other_ harmless things. Stuffed animals. Rice pudding. The Muppet Show.

"Spike was _not_ hired to take care of me," he said firmly. Not hired at all, but he still didn't --quite-- feel like making Spike look like an idiot in front of someone who had some kind of respect for him, however sarcastic it might be. "I don't need a bodyguard. I'm nothing special, like he said. Just along for the ride."

He was standing in front of the elevators now, wondering if there were a polite way to end this conversation, and why he cared, when he quite frankly felt like telling her to go back to whatever afterlife she popped out of, and take her too-right, too-wrong, too-confusing assumptions with her. She watched as he pressed the button for the main floor, then watched him as he waited, arms crossed. He felt the urge to whistle nervously, but clamped his jaw on it.

Finally, she moved. She floated over and reached out a finger towards Xander's face. He flinched, surprised, then angry with himself for showing it. After a tiny pause, she touched him anyway, trailing that small finger down his cheekbone, towards his chin. It wasn't like Marianne's touch had been, falsely solid, only odd because of the lack of heat, and he was used to that, with Spike around. This was tingly, electric, and wet, at the same time, like the air during a storm. It put a taste in his mouth, too, like the little tongue-zap you get from licking one end of a battery.

Xander stood still, being more creeped out than he'd been by the fact that the ghost diner _didn't_ creep him out, or that he'd never even noticed Phantom Dennis was there in Cordy's apartment, until he'd formally introduced himself in the morning. "Could you not... not do that, please?" Her touch felt...wrong. Like only Spike should ever touch him that way, and that would never feel like this.

"I am sorry," she said softly, withdrawing her finger. "I'm a fool, forgive me. I didn't realize. She always called him her bravest, wisest knight in all the land; it never occurred to me that he's capable of playing Sancho Panza, as well."

Huh? The image of Spike in a sombrero flitted through Xander's head, which almost called up a laugh. "Lady, I don't know what you're--"

The auto-babble shut down when she spoke again, like she'd found the magic on/off switch, and he couldn't say a thing as she went on.

"He warned me, once, that if I ever so much as looked crossways at her without her permission, he'd find a way to send me back to Gaki-do-- I suppose you'd call it hell, or one of them-- and rip me to pieces with his own fangs before he did, ghost or no." She pushed her long hair back behind one ear, and smiled again with that almost-human expression. "Such drama. As if I could have harmed her, or wanted to. The madness, the visions that swirl around her head... Delicious. So is Drusilla back home, playing with her dolls, waiting patiently for you to finish whatever quest he's followed you out on?"

Xander swallowed hard, wondering when the conversation had started going over his head. "Dru's in Brazil, I think. Or that was the last place Spike saw her." So why don't you head down south and catch up on old times with _her_, he wanted to add. Wasn't that elevator _ever_ coming?

Rei's eyes opened wide, and she shook her head. "He left her? Left Drusilla? I--" And _she_ seemed at a loss for words, as she hadn't been all during this entire surreal exchange. "He would have fought to his own death for her. The true death. He used to have dreams of her, on fire, turned to ash, and he would wake up shouting for her. Spike _left_ her? What on earth could she have done to make him leave?"

_Made out with other demons, then told him to hit the highway. Think that would about do it for me._ But Xander wouldn't say it out loud. "You'd have to ask Spike. I wouldn't know."

The elevator finally dinged, and Rei seemed to come back to herself, if she'd ever really been gone; he had no idea how to read her expressions, really. She bowed, and Xander caught himself almost doing the same; stifled a half-hysterical giggle at the thought of them doing that eternal Japanese politeness thing, bowing in the hallway until he was old and gray. Instead, he put his hat on his head, wet hair or not, then tipped it to her. Something his old, gray, grandpa would have done.

He walked into the open elevator and pressed the button for the main lobby. When he looked up to ask her what floor, as if she even needed to use the elevator, as if he even wanted to share that space with her, she was gone. And his head was aching even more.

*****

Spike looked down at the dark head leaning against the wall. Breathing slow, almost asleep. Rouse him, or just sit down next to him and put his arm back where it belonged? He'd probably get his head bit off for the second, if how they'd left things ten minutes ago was any indication. He touched Xander gently on the shoulder.

"Aggh!" Xander jumped in his seat, and banged his head against the wall, knocking his hat off his knee. Jumped _away_ from Spike.

Spike snatched his hand back as if he'd been burned, which it half felt like he had. He put both of them up in the air, to ward off whatever snarky comment Xander might throw at him. "Sorry. Just... didn't think you actually wanted to fall asleep in here. You'll get a stiff neck."

Xander was silver-and-black in the darkness, the light from the movie screen occasionally flashing in his eyes as he looked up at Spike. "Yeah, I..." Xander rubbed at his skull, then stretched his neck. "You might be right, there." He picked up his hat and put it on his head.

"What's wrong?" Spike asked, not touching. Trying not to sound too much like whatever had set Xander off in the first place, whatever that had been.

"I dunno. Just got up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess." Spike winced, wishing he could have done something about not being in it when Xander got up. Xander frowned for a moment. Then his face slipped into that bland, clownlike expression he tended to use with his friends. "Maybe I just need to eat. You hungry?"

"Well, yeah, I s'pose. You still mad at me?" Spike tilted his head out of habit, as if changing the angle of his vision would make everything come clear. It didn't.

Xander clenched his fist against his jeans, hidden in the shadows between his leg and the wall, where he probably thought Spike couldn't see it. He flushed, the blood rising up into his cheeks, and Spike could feel the heat from where he stood. "I-- Hell, you just..."

"Insulted your friends?" Spike asked. "In case you hadn't noticed, I've sort of made a hobby of it, since killin' 'em stopped being an option."

Xander shook his head. "No... I don't know. I'm just in a mood. Can't I be in a mood? Don't they have those where you come from?" He wasn't quite snapping.

Was that all, really? Spike nodded slowly. "Yeah, sure. Hell, I can't really remember when Dru _wasn't_ in a mood. No big deal." He brushed the tips of his fingers over Xander's shoulder, and Xander shook them off.

"Bizarre and inexplicable mood swings aside," Xander said, "I'm actually _not_ a girl, you know."

"I'd noticed, yes." Spike let out a tinny, bewildered laugh. "So?

"So you don't need to bring me flowers, Spike. So to speak."

"Ah. What about chocolates?" Spike offered him the bag of M&amp;M's that he'd left sitting on the other chair, and Xander accepted it gingerly. Spike just rubbed at his nose with one hand. There was quiet again for a while, as Xander crunched a handful of candy, and Spike tried to think of what he could say or do that _wouldn't_ irritate him. "So where's food? Back at the room?" Spike asked eventually. "I could do with a bit more than chocolate pudding for lunch, 'less you wanted to forfeit the bet and do some fingerpaintin' with it."

Xander shook his head, not even bothering to come up with a decent retort. "Hotel restaurant. Always gotta eat there once, just to prove how godawful expensive it is. Meeting Will and Tara at one."

Spike peered down at the watch on Xander's left hand. "'Bout that time now." He shifted, yawning a bit, and offered his own hand, to pull Xander up. He didn't expect it to be accepted, somehow, and it wasn't.

Xander stood on his own, and walked past him to the door. Waited, arms crossed as he leaned against the doorframe, for Spike to walk up behind him. "It's on the second floor. We'd better hurry if we don't wanna get turned into toads for non-punctuality."

They walked across the lobby in silence, the chatter of the milling convention-goers suddenly gratingly loud in Spike's ears.

*****

"You do know that's absolutely disgusting, right?" Willow watched as Spike chased the last little piece of _extremely_ rare liver across his plate. It was interesting, in its own way. _There's a Pysch paper in this somewhere, I'm sure. The calming psychosomatic effects of substituting dead cow for dead human in the diet of your average vampire. Kind of like giving him a binkie, instead of letting him suck his thumb, and am I actually picturing Spike sucking his thumb? Yes, I am. Help._

"Would it make you any hungrier for dessert if I told you I was pretending it was the Slayer's greasy bits I'm eating?" Spike confirmed her unspoken diagnosis, using exaggerated delicacy to wipe his mouth with the cloth napkin, then, with a smirk, picked up his plate and licked it. Willow did her best not to make 'Eew-Face,' but she wasn't entirely successful. _So much for clinical detachment, Dr. Rosenberg... Good thing your Psych professor isn't alive to see you making that face._

"You can dress him up, but you can't take him anywhere," Xander commented from across the table, where he was finishing off his last sandwich. They were staying in one of the most expensive hotels in the city, eating in a restaurant that probably added a ten percent surcharge for breathing the air in the waiting area, and Spike had seduced them into billing it to the room, aka Angel. So what did Xander order? Four peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and about a gallon of chocolate milk. Willow was still trying to puzzle that one out.

"Yeah, you'd almost think I was raised by vampires or something," Spike said, deadpan.

Willow smiled. "Speaking of, I called Angel this morning. Just to check in."

"Yeah? He find the bad guys, dispense justice, save the world, and settle in for a good long afternoon of feeling guilty about it?" Spike asked.

"No, he found the bad guys, followed them around for a night and half a day, and decided they're just trying to drive him nuts. When I talked to him, he and Wesley were sitting in the lobby eating raspberry truffles and arguing over whether they should just pack it all up and go home. Cordy was whining something in the background about Angel being a dead --um, deader-- man if she ended up gaining five pounds on a wild goose chase."

"Joy." Spike flicked a glance at Xander. "How is it we get to spend the day with the gamers and geeks, and Angel and his lot sit about stuffing imported choccies down their throats?"

"You've been an evil vampire for a hundred and something-something years," Xander answered. "It's your punishment. And I'm being punished for giving you shelter and letting you hustle me at bowling."

Spike rolled his eyes, Willow wasn't sure at which comment. "I told Angel about your friend the Gaki," she said to him. He blinked, then nodded.

"Figured you would. And?"

"Wesley said he wanted to talk to you about her, because he'd never actually met anyone who knew a Gaki, and he'd always found the concept of the Hungry Ghosts fascinating-- that they eat only one thing, that they're never satisfied, et cetera, etcetera. He went on about it for a while."

Spike snorted, and Willow had to stop herself from defending her fellow research-nerd's excitement. "And the Great Detective, ultimate authority on nasty night-critters who didn't recognize a Fyarl demon when it was ripping bits off his scalp, had what to say?"

"_Angel_ said you were the one who knew her, so you were probably right about her being safe." Willow smiled at Spike's look of surprise. "Of course he also said that if you let any of us get into trouble, he'll personally beat you until those brains you never use fall out of your skull and splatter on the ground, then he'll make you clean it up with your tongue." It had been an interesting image, to say the least, and Willow had done her own fair share of blinking when she heard it, as well as wondering just how _happy_ it had made Angel to get Spike out of his face for the weekend.

"Yeah, that sounds more like him. Not, of course, that I care, but Rei's no danger to you lot. Like I said. If she's even still here."

"She's still here," Xander said, looking at his glass of milk. Playing with his straw. "I saw her this morning, on my way downstairs."

"You didn't say." Spike glanced almost accusingly at him, though he wasn't looking up to catch the expression.

"Didn't think it mattered. You didn't seem all that jazzed to see her, last night."

"No, not really. She just always sort of rubbed me the wrong way; too high and mighty for her own good; reminded me of Angel's Sire a bit too much. Dru was all cosy with 'er, though, so I never bothered chasing her off. Still, you might've mentioned." Spike was looking around the table distractedly, like he hoped some of those imported raspberry truffles that Angel and his gang were munching on over at the other hotel, might materialize on it. No such luck; Willow would have been perfectly happy with some herself, if only to feed them to Xander and put a real smile on his face, but between the four of them, they'd long ago devoured all the samples they'd picked up at the party last night. The table contained only the remains of their late lunch.

"Are you guys sure you don't want any salad? This thing is ridiculous." Willow pointed to the bowl in front of her, which dwarfed everything else on the table both in size and complexity. When she'd ordered a salad, she'd been thinking lettuce, tomatoes, maybe some turkey strips. Not the Moby Dick of the vegetable patch, bigger than her head and drowning in carrots, radishes, cheese, mushrooms, and about a hundred more leaves of green than she was carrying in her wallet right now. She'd only been able to eat half of it, even with Tara's help.

"No thanks. I've had my five food groups. Bread, fruit, nuts, dairy, and chocolate," Xander said, leaning back in his chair. He was trying for his 'I know I ate too much and I'll regret it later, but damn, that was good' smile, but it was coming off as something else, something familiar from the last few days. Hyper and weird and trying to be brave for the troops.

Willow gave a little sigh. It had been wonderful just to sit and talk with him yesterday, about what was going on in his life -- the kind of thing they'd all stopped doing, really, over the course of this year. Even if there were things he still wasn't telling her, at least he had been able to say something to somebody, which, she knew from experience, meant a lot. He'd talked quietly and joked with her until she fell asleep, and it had been good. He'd been...maybe happy, and she'd been hoping it would last longer than just the night.

When he caught her looking at him, he smiled quickly, and she smiled back, hopefully looking less edgy than he did. She glanced back down at her salad. "Spike? Still hungry? Wanna pretend this thing is...um...Buffy's hair, or something?" _Oh, I did not just ask him that. Bad Willow, do not encourage the vampire to fantasize about eating your best friend._

"Nice thought, luv, but Bunnicula I'm not." He gnashed his totally human teeth at her. "If it can't be taken on the hoof, I don't want it in my mouth, ta muchly."

"Oh, like Fritos, Cheesy Chips, and Suzy-Q's put up a satisfying struggle when you chase 'em down an alley," Xander pointed out.

"S'different."

"How, exactly?"

"Well, for one thing, they're not covered in garlic ranch dressing," Spike said, indicating the white goop that thoroughly coated the salad.

"Oops. Sorry about that," said Willow. Not, of course, that Spike had actually addressed the issue of why he scarfed so much human junk-food. All he'd done was change the subject so nobody would pick up on the fact that the Big Bad didn't like to eat his veggies. Maybe he _did_ need a binkie. Or just a couple of surrogate-moms to pick on him about his poor nutrition choices, since he was raised by vampires...

As if on cue, Tara looked up at Spike. "Um..."

The vampire rolled his eyes. "Yes, my lady of the long silences?" At Willow's raised eyebrow, he shrugged. "What, you'd prefer 'what the hell do you want, Blondie?' "

"It would make me feel more secure, strangely." _Uses chopped liver as a pacifier. Puts blood on his cereal. Sorts M&amp;M's into color groups. Lives in Xander's basement, watches soap operas, and spouts pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue to my girlfriend. Looks really good naked, and I did not just think that. Why can't I meet any normal vampires? Why did that question sound less ridiculous than it should have?_

"Fine," Spike shrugged, and turned back to Tara. "What the hell do you want, Blondie?"

Tara speared a piece of perch on her fork, and looked like she'd rather chew it and forget about having opened her mouth at all. At last, she said, tentatively, "Bunnicula?"

A challenging raise of Spike's scarred brow. "Yeah?"

"Just... you read kids' books? That's kinda... well..."

"Cute," Willow finished for her, when she trailed off into what threatened to be yet another of Spike's 'long silences'.

"I am _not_ cute," Spike protested. "Devastatingly hot, maybe, but not cute. And I don't read kids' books by choice. Dru dug it out of the knapsack of some Girl Guide that she was making a snack of, found out it was about a vampire rabbit, and made me read it to her."

Xander laughed, a bit mockingly. "He blames anything he doesn't want to get caught reading on Drusilla. Romance novels, poetry... Pretty sure he'd blame Passions on her, if it wasn't a TV show."

"No, I blame that one on the Watcher. Don't let him give you any blather about how _I_ got _him_ into it. He was already utterly corrupted."

This time it was Willow's turn to catch on something Spike had said, and start thinking, which was always dangerous. The picture of Spike reading to Drusilla was eerily... well... cute. There wasn't any other word for it. _If you airbrush out the dead Girl Scout lying on the ground, of course._ But still... Trust Willow Rosenberg to care deeply about the widespread vampire illiteracy problem, of course, but the thought bugged her. Maybe it was just the image of Spike, in all his kickass, demonic splendor, taking care of a crazy, childlike vampire who couldn't even amuse herself except for visions and tea parties with her dolls.

"Drusilla can't read?" she asked.

Spike shot her a dirty look. "Of course she can read, twit. She just can't concentrate on the page for very long. And she likes to hear somebody else reading to her, anyway. Or tellin' her a story." His eyes did a funny kind of thing where they went gray for a second, and Willow hoped this wasn't the prelude to another 'I'm gonna get drunk and mopey and sob all over you about my ex' moment, this time without broken bottles being shoved in her face. "She gets this look," he continued, "like she's really there, for a while. 'Cos she's focusing on your voice, and you can see it, for as long as you're talking. She's paying attention to _you_, not whatever fairy thing is whispering in her ear."

They were all watching him, as he looked off into space, seeing something else, and Willow couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Drusilla might have been a completely loony, evil, vampy, ho, but she'd been _his_ evil vampy ho, and there was something genuine in Spike's voice when he talked about her, like for once he wasn't lying, or using the truth to manipulate you, just being honestly...something.

"Hell, I'd read her the yellow pages, if she asked me, and I'm not too bloody proud to say it," he finished.

Silence at the table, while Spike stared challengingly at her, and Willow felt like an idiot. Tara, meanwhile, was eyeing Spike like he'd just stepped off the mothership. She almost raised her hand; Willow could see it lifting off the table, then thumping down again, like Tara remembered she didn't actually have to ask permission to speak. "I...I guess I'm the only one who has to be filled in on the plot here, but I'm getting used to that, this weekend. Who's Drusilla?"

Xander was looking at Spike, too, and he wasn't even trying for that fake happy-ate-too-much face anymore. This was the face he'd been wearing when he'd come to pick them up at the bus station, when he'd thought she wasn't looking. The one that made Willow want to take him away somewhere and feed him raspberry truffles until he smiled again. "That would be the girl he left behind him. Except she left _him_ behind. Dumped him somewhere in South America, for something slimier than Willow's salad, and he spends most of his time bitching about it to anybody who doesn't care to listen. I guess it's just selective-amnesia day."

Willow was taken aback. It wasn't so much what he'd said, as the sudden bitterness in his voice. He was _way_ over Anya, or said he was, so he couldn't really be annoyed that Spike seemed to be forgetting the whole dumped-guy-bonding thing. What could have--- _Oh. Can you say 'hubris,' Willow? It's our word for the day. As in, one talk with you will fix all of Xander's problems and he won't be in and out of a crappy mood all weekend because this mysterious guy he's in love with isn't here, and might not love Xander back even if he were. Which would mean he's an idiot, but that's neither here nor there. Spike's right, you are a twit._ And she was babbling, even in her own head.

"Xander?" she said softly.

"What? It's nothing we haven't all heard before, except somehow Tara got lucky, until now. He whines about Dru all the time."

"Yeah, but..."

"This _is_ the biteless jerk we're talking about, right?" Xander asked, a bit softer himself, now that he was speaking directly to her, instead of indirectly to the confused-looking vampire across from him. "Since when did Spike-baiting stop being a national pastime?"

"Since you sat down to lunch with him, voluntarily. Geez, Xan, you act like you aren't letting the guy live with you, also voluntarily. You even go bowling with him. So what bit you on the butt today?" _As in, what specifically set you off when you were in such a good mood last night, and is there anything I can do to fix it, because I'm Super-Yenta, able to leap tall, sexually undecided best friends in a single bound. Someone please smack me._

Xander opened his mouth. Thank God, because if they relied on Willow's pretend super-powers to save the day, they'd be screwed. "Hey Wills..." She looked at him, hoping for some explanation. Instead she got, "Who's Sancho Panza?"

Blink. Blink. Blinkblinkblink... Huh? If he was trying to change the subject, he'd picked a lamer method than Spike's. Willow shook her head, then answered him. "Um... he was the little villager who played squire to Don Quixote, even though he knew the guy was nuts."

"Don Quixote being the old man who thought he was a knight and went--" Spike started in.

"Tilting at windmills. Yeah, I get it. Sancho Panza, same as Sancho Panda, without the fur. Go pop-culture boy. " He fell silent again. Willow looked at Spike, to see if _he_ knew what was going on. The vampire was busy looking at Xander just as questioningly as Willow had been, while Xander studied his milk again. Yup, they were a lively group. It wasn't exactly cut-it-with-a-knife tension. Maybe spread-it-with-a-butter-knife, but Xander had eaten all the dinner rolls already. Tara, as usual, was keeping her mouth shut. Which meant it was up to Willow to salvage things with her quick wits and impressive conversational skills, after all. _God help us._

"Anybody want dessert? They have Death By Chocolate..." she said in her most seductive voice. Which, with the squeak in the middle, would probably only be successful if she were trying to seduce Mickey Mouse.

"Not hungry," Xander said, taking a drink of his milk, then making a face, as if it had suddenly gone sour.

_Yup. That worked._

*****

Interlude at the Rosa Grande East

There was someone in line ahead of Cordelia at the Toblerone booth. Which should have been a _good_ thing, right? It would protect her hips from the evil chocolate for at least another five minutes, and keep her occupied and away from the unending Wesley/Angel debate about whether they'd been set up by Wolfram and Hart, or there was really something going on here. Which would have made more sense if the guys could pick a side. Angel says screw it, let's go home, Wesley says hello, they tried to kill you. Angel says people do that every day. Wesley says fine, screw it, let's go home. Angel says no, he'd feel too guilty if they were really up to something.

Et freakin' cetera -- they changed positions so often that you'd think they were arguing for the sheer fun of arguing. Of _course_ they'd been set up, of _course_ they were being led around by the noses like the stubborn male jackasses they were. But they didn't have to _act_ like it-- they could just sit around for a few more hours, pretend to enjoy the atmosphere, then suck it up, admit they'd been tricked, and check out. But noooooo... they had to sit in the lobby and bicker until everyone around them was so bored that moving away was pretty much a survival imperative.

So Cordelia should have been overjoyed to be out of it, and standing patiently in line behind the small blonde woman who couldn't seem to make up her mind between white, dark, or filled Toblerone. So why did she feel like jumping up and down and yelling 'Get _both_, you fashionably-pale Buffy-clone, and get the hell out of my way?' Mostly because since she'd made the decision to eat the damned chocolate anyway, she didn't want to give her brain time to talk her out of it.

"Do I like this?" the woman was saying. Cordelia peered over her shoulder, refraining from pointing out that the way to find out was, of course, to buy some and get the hell out of her way. Even the Toblerone representative had one of those 'Someone help me' smiles pasted on his face. Cordelia sighed.

"Do you like which? The white? It _can_ be a little weird-tasting, but it's nice dissolved in coffee," she said, trying to sound as friendly as possible.

The woman turned her head, with a confused, somewhat spacey look. "No...this." A small, graceful wave of her hand that somehow managed to take in the whole room at once.

Cordelia bit back a comment about riding the short bus to school, because, for the most part, she didn't make those kind of comments anymore. Still, this one did seem a few M&amp;M's shy of a bag. _Gotta stop thinking in chocolate metaphors, Cordy. Pretty soon you'll be as bad off as Xander._ She took a deep breath and tried again. "The hotel? The chocolatiers' convention? The Toblerone stand?"

The blonde picked up a sample of milk chocolate. "This. I don't know-- I can't remember, if I like it or not. I don't think they had it, when I was a little girl." Her voice was _still_ little-girlish, and Cordelia wondered if it was a fake-- she knew a lot of guys who could be hooked in by that kind of act-- or if she was really as loopy as she sounded.

Then the content of her sentence filtered through, and Cordy blinked. "Chocolate? You don't think they had chocolate when you were a kid?"

The other woman nodded dreamily. "And later... I think maybe it didn't taste right. Or I found something that tasted better."

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. "Put that in your mouth, and tell me you found something that tasted better, honey." The woman did, and for a moment all her concentration was focused on moving her jaw. "No, you don't chew it, you let it dissolve in your mouth. Let it flow over your tongue, and get into all the little taste buds you forgot you even owned."

There was something utterly bizarre about teaching someone to eat chocolate-- especially someone as white-bread as this girl. It wasn't like she was some kind of newbie, just off the boat from Walla-Walla, after all -- her accent was pure upperclass American. As Cordelia watched the expression of wonder spread across the pale face, though, she began to think that maybe the comment she hadn't made about the short bus was closer to the mark than just a randomly swallowed piece of sarcasm. The blonde reached for another piece of chocolate, and the Toblerone guy seemed torn between gently encouraging her to _buy_ some instead of hogging the free samples, and keeping his mouth shut so he didn't have to get into a conversation with the flake. Cordelia touched her softly on the arm.

"Are you here with somebody?" She _could_ have wandered into the hotel by herself; she was well-dressed, and no one would look twice at her in the lobby of the Rosa Grande, unless you actually spoke to her. But she didn't have a purse, and the white sundress she wore left very few possibilities for places she could have been carrying money. For crosstown travel, or buying chocolate.

"Oh, yeah. Them." The blonde grinned conspiratorially. "I gave them the slip. It was way too easy."

Cordy played along. "Yeah, I managed to get away from my resident party poopers, too. But maybe we should get you back to yours, now?" Before some sleazeball picked her up and led her off to the places that innocent little girls in L.A. get led off to when they don't know any better...

A pout, then a sad nod. "He'll have a fit, of course-- but how on earth was I supposed to resist? All you have to do is brush up against that boy and tickle his fancy, and he's too busy staring off into space to notice you're not there anymore. And I just told _her_ she had a new gray hair. I think she's still standing in the bathroom, looking at herself." There was a little shudder at those words. "In the mirror. Ugh."

Cordelia blinked twice, then nodded slowly. Uh-huuuuuuuh. "Do you want me to...um... help you find them?"

"I don't know-- should I be talking to you? I'm not supposed to be ready for polite company, you know." Something in the other woman's voice, childlike as it was, made Cordelia's ears twitch. Somebody's wasn't as chock-full-o-nuts as she seemed. Or maybe Cordelia was just too used to dealing with truly insane people, by now, given the fact that she worked with two of them. There was a sly smile from the blonde. "Do you have more of this?" She held up the piece of chocolate that she'd been about to pop into her mouth.

Cordelia picked up five packages of dark chocolate and three of the nougat-filled. "I will in a minute." She turned to the salesman. As a certified good guy, she couldn't very well let _anybody_ go through life never having had their own Toblerone bar-- and the more she shoved down blondie's throat, the less would go down her own, right? Which would have been a decent excuse if she hadn't reached down and grabbed three more bars when she thought about having to share. For...um...Wesley. Yeah. That was it.

But when Cordelia turned back around to ask the weird girl if she wanted to try one of the new sample bars with walnuts in them, there was no one there. After a moment of looking around, Cordy finally shrugged. The girl did seem to know where she'd left her friends, after all, and didn't really appear to be running away, more like just playing hookey. Cordelia bought two of the walnut bars for herself --er, Wesley -- and headed back towards her bickering friends.

Who weren't bickering anymore, they were... Cordelia blinked at them from behind a big potted fern. Urp. Well. _That_ was interesting. Blinkblinkblink. Wesley. Blink. Angel. Blink. With the lips. And the hands. Blink blink. And the lips. Wait, she'd thought that already. Um. Wow.

She'd thought it would take them at least another six months to figure out the fucking obvious.

Couldn't interrupt them. It would be rude. And they might start arguing again. Which would be _so_ much less entertaining. Not that she was watching. So maybe she should just stay here behind the large jungle plant, and eat some chocolate. And... um... not watch. Just to make sure Angel didn't get too happy, or anything.

*****

Meanwhile, Back At The RG West...

Spike was _not_ happy. Things hadn't gotten any better, over the next few hours. When Tara haltingly suggested that they take another walk around the convention booths, Spike had practically jumped from the table, and was pleased to see that Xander rose as quickly. It was a short-lived pleasure; walking about merely diffused the tension across a bit more physical space -- and Xander was staying as far away from him as physically possible, keeping the women between them at all times.

He still wasn't saying much of anything, either. Or rather, the girls twittered to everyone in hearing range, and Xander answered them politely, but never dropped a word in Spike's direction. Nothing, no matter how many times he held up a model or a book and made clever, mostly-non-derisive comments about it. Zilch. Not a blind bit of luck. Spike was starting to wonder if he'd have to _volunteer_ to wear one of Xander's few remaining tropical print shirts, just to get him to explain what Spike had done this time, let alone forgive him.

The witches finally cajoled them into an autograph line. The magical mystical double-team cheer squad to the rescue. 'Oooh, it'll be fun, come on, he's even British, Spike....' Yeah, like he wanted to meet every dingwad who set foot off the isles, just 'cos they spoke the same language. This wasn't even an actor or writer, just some stunt double he'd never heard of.

But Xander shrugged and slid down the wall to a seated position on the carpet, just like everyone ahead of them in the serpentine queue, so Spike followed suit, wondering what it was he was supposed to get autographed. _Here, sign my grumpy lover for me?_ Why he was even here was debatable. He should be up in the room, fussing and fuming and possibly tossing off in the shower. Contemplating the fact that he was _living_ Dawson's Creek, instead of being home watching the summer repeats in the privacy of their own dank little hellhole. But now it was a challenge. Some kind of moral _Gag..._ imperative. Figure out what the sodding hell was wrong with Xander, or die trying. So William the Bloody was sitting in a line with a bunch of humans he'd rather drain than wait behind, immediate company more or less excepted, and brooding. _Just shove a can of mousse up my arse and call me Angelus._

What could it be? Lack of sex, maybe? That always put _Spike_ in a bad mood. _Fuck, if it's just that, he can have the bet. Stupid idea in the first place, really. Smack whichever of you brain-blips came up with it, if I ever figure it out. Let him buy me all the clothes he wants. He can dress me up as Mork from Ork if it means he stops giving me that bloody look like he wants to either stake me or burn me and he can't decide which._ Spike was just that close to whining aloud, at his own frustration. Confusion. Need for...something.

Something. If he could just reach across those few inches and take Xander's hand, it would be something. Just his fingers around Xander's, like they'd been in the dark last night, this morning, those times when no one could see. Just a moment, there in a crowded little hallway, the girls chattering next to them with nary a clue that Spike wanted nothing more than to lean over and pull his lover into his arms, and tell him everything would be all right, no matter what was bothering him. Tell him over and over and over until he finally believed it, even if it took forever, and who cared if Spike looked a right nelly for doing it, so long as Xander was happy? If he could...

But he couldn't, or he wouldn't have slunk out of bed in the first place, would he.

When he'd looked across the lunch table at those once-again angry black eyes, not a speck of gold showing in them anywhere, it had more than unnerved Spike. It had terrified him, and he wasn't sure why. Wasn't sure of anything all of a sudden, except that he didn't know what he'd done wrong. Again. But this time there wasn't any formal, sulky, 'I'm not speaking to you' to give him the clue that it really was something silly that he could fix if he just waited the whole thing out. That was what he'd always had to do with Dru, just wait, but... Spike stared, trying to look like he wasn't. Trying to see what was going on in there. Xander leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed. Breathing so slow that Spike was pretty sure he'd nodded off, but the eyeballs were moving under the lids. Twitching.

It should be so simple. Spike's talent for picking out human emotions like, well, eyeballs, fished from the socket with an oyster fork, wasn't on strike today. Willow was feeling guilty 'cos she thought she'd set the whole thing off -- though it couldn't really have anything to do with her silly garlic-laced salad, since it had started before they ever got to lunch -- and babbling to fill up the silence. Little Blondie was answering her back because everything she did in the world was focused on keeping Red happy, even though she could sense the tension and it was making her nervous, blood thumping a bit faster, and the teeth nibbling away at that bottom lip of hers. Easy to read as a children's book about a vampire bunny. So why couldn't he suss out what had been making his lover glare and twitch and occasionally snap at him all day?

He glanced at his own hand where it rested on his knee, lest one of the women see him looking too long at Xander and suspect...something. Then he glanced back at the closed eyes, shaded by the brim of the silly, wonderful hat. As if Spike could peer through skin and pupil and nerves and down into the strange thing that was Xander's brain, if he just stared hard enough. _What's happening in there? How do I make things right? Would it help if I could touch you, here and now? Do you want me to? Or would it just make you even crosser with me?_

There were a thousand little rules, he was beginning to understand, though Xander wouldn't tell him what they were, and he didn't quite have the stones to ask. The one he was concerned with now though, was 'we don't touch in public, unless it looks like a gag, like a fight, like they might have to drag us apart before we kill each other.' Spike had broken that one in front of Angel, and it had worked out all right in the end, but did that mean he should do it with the witches? Let them know, and hope they didn't turn him into a toad? Sunnydale, even Sunnydale-in-L.A., was a whole different world.

He might ruin it all if he guessed, and he might ruin it all if he asked, and he might ruin it all if he reached. One finger, even, would stretch across that space between him and that sleeping mystery next to him, and crush all those unspoken rules into so many little pieces. A whole hand could shatter the universe.

So he tapped it on his knee. Just Spike and his usual attention-deficit-rude-boy behavior that nobody even noticed anymore. _He_ could twitch and snap all he wanted and no one would look at him cross-eyed. So he did. Tap and tap and tap. Picked at a loose little thread in the denim a bit, then tapped some more.

Xander woke up, if he'd been asleep at all. Blinked and shook his head, somewhere else for a second, then his eyes cleared. He scowled at Spike, then looked away. Said something to Willow, ignoring Spike entirely.

Fine. Tap and tap again, then, since he wasn't going to talk. Fidget and fuss until Spike was pissing Xander off, even if nobody else noticed. He glared at Spike again, and Spike glared back. _La la la la, I don't care. I'm immortal, I'm insane, I'm bored, this is what you get..._ Xander looked away, so Spike tapped some more. So Xander glared some more.

Spike tapped some more, and Spike picked some more, and Spike tapped and picked and tapped and picked until even yon witches were looking up to see what the hell he was doing, and _Xander_ was positively burning him to a crisp with that stare. Had Spike six feet under and pushing up daisies or petunias or some other pansified flower that Dru used to pick the petals off, and he had Spike choking on the dirt, as well. Good. Fine. Perfect. Spike tapped, tapped, picked, tapped, pushing the tension until he could just hear the growl rumbling behind Xander's teeth like a trapped animal.

Then Xander reached out and grabbed his wrist.

Spike smirked-- like he'd succeeded at something when he didn't even know what he was bloody doing. Like he'd really done the impossible by getting the almightily stubborn Xander Harris to crack. He smirked, and he rubbed his thumb once along the hidden creases of the warm, slightly work-roughened palm, and he hoped he didn't look like too much of an idiot when he didn't try to pull away.

"If you don't stop that," Xander hissed, "I'm going to personally shove a stake so far up your ass, you'll be the world's only vampire unicorn. For about three seconds." He let Spike's wrist go with a little shake, as if he was disgusted with himself for even having touched it.

"Oh, go to blazes!" Spike snapped, his brief feeling of triumph and its accompanying smile disappearing instantly. Hell and high water, couldn't he do _anything_ right? "Since we're being crude, as someone once said to me, what crawled up yours and died?" Which wasn't exactly how he'd planned to ask it, but it served to get the job done.

Willow was staring at Xander with undisguised confusion, as well. "Okay, really, Xan. He's got a point. I know Spike's irritating, but he's not _that_ irritating. What's wrong?"

"There is nothing _wrong_ with me!" Xander snapped. Willow's eyes widened, and Xander pulled his hat off and rubbed at his eyes. "Sorry. Sorry. I'm just tired, I guess. Staying up 'til three will do it to you, even if you sleep in."

"You do look a little beat. Why don't you go back to the room and take a nap? We can get an autograph for you, if you want." Willow gestured vaguely upwards, and Spike sent her a silent thanks as Xander slowly nodded and rose to his feet. Maybe alone in the room, they could hash this out, whatever there was to hash.

"Not really in the mood to sit about waiting for my arse to fall asleep either," Spike said as soon as Xander had walked around the corner. "Assume you two can entertain yourselves? Or each other?"

Tara, of course, blushed. Willow sent him a mock glare, nothing like the one Xander had been burning him down with. "Oh, go, Spike. Get lost. You've got Wesley's cell-phone, right? I promise we'll call you before we actually leave the hotel, even if Xander decides he wants to conveniently forget you."

"Your generosity overwhelms me. I'll be waiting with long-abated breath."

Spike took his leave and followed Xander, quickly spotting the dark fedora as it bobbed through and around the amorphous groups of chattering geeks whose only purpose in existing seemed to be getting in Spike's way. He finally caught up in the lobby, by the lifts. Xander was leaning against the wall, looking seriously done in. Maybe it _was_ just lack of sleep? "Look--" Spike started, on his way to an apology, or a confrontation, or _something_ \-- but that was all he got the chance to say.

"What? Fine, I'm getting cranky; I'll go take my nap." Still that stormy look in Xander's eyes, like he could be bothered to play nice for his friends, but not for Spike.

"I just thought you might like some company, s'all." Spike reached for Xander's arm, just an old, ingrained physical motion of comfort from his Dru-days, that he cursed himself for not resisting in this so-public of public places. But it was too late.

Well. Now there was a touch, though hardly a happy one. Xander's hand around his elbow, pushing him away from the lift doors, a grip almost worthy of vampiric strength. "I don't need you to tuck me in, Spike. I'm a full-sized, state of the art, grown up man type guy, and if I decide I require an extra blankey or a new teddy bear for some reason, I'll call room service. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't remotely understand," Spike snapped, in spite of himself. "I have no _idea_ what I've done to piss you off this time, and you don't seem inclined to clue me in. So much for 'I'm not a girl, Spike,' " Dammit, he wasn't trying to get in a fight, but honestly... Oh, smegging hell, to borrow another phrase. He calmed himself, hoping his softer tone would do the same for Xander. "Ah, look, I'm sorry. You don't do so well with sleeping alone, and I happen to like making sure that's not an issue. I'm just...trying to help."

And now there was no hand on him, nothing at all. Xander's voice was cold as old blood, and miles and miles away, as he said quietly, "What the hell makes you think I need your help? I don't need pity from a-- what was it? A geek more useless than I am."

"I don't think you're..." What the hell was happening, here? "Whatever I said back then, you know that's not true. You're not useless, any more than I'm...

Xander backed away, then stared Spike straight in the eye. "What? The bravest fucking knight in all the land? Or a crippled vampire who has to make himself look big by biting up my nasty bad dreams, so he won't have to admit how pathetic his life really is? Don't need either of 'em."

*****

It shot out of Xander's mouth like he was some kind of poison-spitting toad, and he wanted to take it back the minute he said it, but something stopped him. Something spun him around and stepped him into the waiting elevator and pressed the button, and didn't let him look up as Spike said, "Right. I'll just... go someplace that's...not here, then." Xander's head _hurt_, still, but it wasn't the ache in his skull that clenched his fists and made the skin on the bridge of his nose prickle like he was going to sneeze or cry, and he _wasn't_ going to cry. He wasn't. Not until the doors closed, at least, and if he swallowed hard, maybe not even then.

He'd just wanted to go and... not be with Spike someplace where he wasn't _with_ Spike, so he could think. Or not-think. Why the hell did Spike have to follow him? Act so damned _concerned_ that he almost sounded like Willow? He didn't need that. Xander might have been edgy, he might have been snippy, but he wasn't out of control, and he didn't need...

But he did need, all those things he'd said he didn't, so why couldn't he say? Why had he chased Spike away with the kind of shit he hadn't said since Spike had moved out of the basement the first time, the kind of shit he didn't remotely mean? Why did a hand reaching out to him, that he wanted so much to take, make him shrink back like it was as poisonous as his own words?

_Because I am a man, dammit. Not a kid, not a boy, not a lad, and nobody beats me when I actually show my face upstairs at home. I'm not helpless, I'm not stupid, I know how to read, even if I've never read Don Key-friggin'-hotay. But he's treating me like I'm gonna break, or like... like I'm already broken. Humoring me._ He pressed his head against the wood paneling of the elevator and stabbed blindly at the button for his floor. _Make Xander happy at all costs, or he might freak out on you. Keeps acting like it didn't matter, when I've spaced it, but he's lying. Got to be lying. Fuck, he's Spike. Of course he's lying. He always lies._ But he'd ignored it, ignored the lies they were both telling each other, until now. Now...

Now a touch of Spike's hand on his skin, and he'd freaked again, because it was so soft, and so damn hesitant, and Spike should _not_ have been afraid to touch him, and he shouldn't have been afraid of the touch. Nothing made sense, and Xander felt like the moving elevator was just one more thing that was pulling the earth out from under his feet. Off-balance. Needing something, somebody, to hold his arm so he didn't stumble out the door, but there wasn't anyone there, just a vampire somewhere down on the first floor, who wanted to be here with him, but Xander had chased him away.

And that was the problem, wasn't it. Wanted. Evil guy. Wanted. Wanted to hold him. Wanted to... help him. But why? Why would Spike bare his fangs at monsters for him, agree to bite up his nightmares, wrap his arms around Xander at night? For the sex? He could have gotten that from anybody he flashed his porno-jeans at. Xander Harris, boy virgin, couldn't have been _that_ good. So why?

It didn't take long for him to figure it out. Just the time it took for the elevator to make him a bit dizzy, because it was so fast. The time it took to sing that Sesame Street pinball song, onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten, eleven-twe-eh-eh-eh-elve. That was all the time he had, before it hit him. Or two weeks, if you wanted to count it like that.

It hit him, and it kept hitting him. Hit him as he walked out onto the twelfth floor and couldn't quite see past the haze in front of his face, though he wasn't crying, because if it didn't make it out of your eyes, it wasn't crying. It hit him as he keyed the door. Hit him as he turned on the light. Hit him as he tossed his hat on the floor and walked into the bathroom and bent down over the cool porcelain sanitized for your protection bowl and vomited up four peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and three glasses of chocolate milk and more blue M&amp;M's than he ever wanted to see again in his life.

It hit him as he opened the sliding glass door. Hit him as he stood on the balcony in the rain and let it wash over him until he was freezing and soaking, and every word he could think of to yell at Spike, he'd yelled out into the air twelve stories above anybody who could hear him. It was still hitting him ten minutes later, or twenty, he wasn't sure how long he stood out there, staring at the dark gray sky like it would rain down answers on him instead of just smog-filled water. It was hitting him like the raindrops were hitting him, like if he stood out there long enough it could beat him to a bloody, bruised pulp and then Spike would be perfectly happy, wouldn't he.

Because Xander knew, now. What Spike thought he was. What Spike was keeping him for. Not the conversation, not the rent-free accommodation, not the fun things they could do with chocolate pudding or how much they both liked to win at board games. None of it was the real reason. The whywhywhywhywhy that was supposed to be reserved for the middle of the night when he was scared out of his mind by dreams and truth and his own desires, and needed Spike to hold him and make it all okay. When he crawled up, crazy and shivering and trying to bury himself in Spike's touch, asking...begging for Spike to drink from him...

The why. It didn't have a damn thing to do with Alexander LaVelle Harris or what he was or had been or could be, or who he'd finally admitted to himself that he loved.

It didn't have a damn thing to do with William the Bloody ever being able to love him back. Because when Spike looked at Alexander Harris, all he was seeing was somebody else. Somebody he'd never get back, so he was trying to find the next best thing. And Xander had thought it was Angel he had to be worried about.

"I'm not fucking Drusilla!" Xander shouted out into the wind, and if anybody _did_ hear, they probably wondered why he felt the need to make that statement. Angry husband in the hotel room with a Luger cocked at his head? They sure as hell wouldn't think he was pointing out that he wasn't, in fact, a hundred and forty year old female vampire with the mind of a grade-schooler. It would pretty much be obvious to them. Obvious to any random stranger who walked past him in the lobby, obvious to everybody in the whole sorry, fucked-up world, except Spike.

He _didn't_ cry. That shit was over, at least. If there was water on his face it was rain, washing down from godknowswhere; should be too hot for rain in L.A. in July, but it hadn't stopped all day. Just rain. Nothing that he needed a vampire to protect him from. To take care of him because of. To wrap his coat around because it was fucking freezing out here even on the second day of July, in the rain, in L.A., and Spike always fell for that I'm so cold routine. Xander didn't need it, and he didn't need a lover who would rock him back and forth in the dark and wipe the water from his face, because he wasn't helpless, and he wasn't crazy, and he wasn't crying.

He laughed, though. Laughed loud and long. Long after he stopped saying anything that remotely resembled English words, long after his throat was rough and raw. Laughed because it was the only thing to do, really. Laughed, as he left the door open so he could hear the rain fall, and turned off the lights and curled up on the bed in the dark, under the covers where it was at least kind of warm. Laughed, because the funniest thing of all was, it didn't matter. He wasn't even as brave as Anya, who'd had the balls to leave him. Xander Harris was just pathetic enough, himself, to stay with somebody who'd looked at him for two years, off and on, and never even seen his face. And that was too damned funny for words.

And if that face was buried in the pillow as he stopped laughing and fell asleep, because there was nothing left of him to stay awake, it didn't matter whose it was, did it.

*****

He was on his fourth cigarette, and his third cider, and the bartender kept giving him the 'what the hell are you drinking, and can I get you a parasol to go in it' look. "You got a problem, mate?" Spike said at last, as he tipped the bottle up to drain it.

"Just thinking if you're trying to get drunk-- and you're drinking like you are-- it'll take you a while on that stuff."

"Thanks for the tip. Get me another and sod off." A shrug from the middle-aged barkeep, and there was another bottle of Woodpecker clanked down on the counter in front of him.

"We do have Blackthorne's, you know," the bartender said as he popped the bottlecap off. Ah, good, save Spike the trouble of vamping out and biting it off with his teeth, fun as it might be to scare the natives.

"Which part of sod off didn't you understand? The sod, or the off?" Spike grabbed the bottle and drained it in one long swallow. Couldn't really taste it anyway. "'Nother." The man turned without a word, and Spike just stared at the dartboard, waiting for the next bottle, and wondering what the hell he was doing with his unlife. Sitting in a stuffy little sports bar in a pseudo-Edwardian hotel, drinking his sorrows away with Dru's favorite beverage of the corpuscle-free variety. And it wasn't 'cos it reminded him of _her_. It reminded him of Xander's lips on this same sort of bottle last night, and the little grin the boy'd given him when Spike pointed out that he was technically corrupting a minor by letting Xander drink it. And now...

_Little son of a bitch thinks I'm pathetic. Well, of course he does. I am. Wasting my time trying to figure out what bee he's got in his bonnet this time, trying to take care of him, and he thinks I'm a bloody cripple. Finally said it. Sod him. Fuck him from here to the ninth circle of hell and back. Fuck him for saying it, and fuck him for being right, and... Just fuck him. Don't need him either. Don't need any of 'em. Don't need poncy Angel to find me something valuable to do like lookin' for demons that aren't even here, don't need the Sapphic Wiccans staring at me like I'm some kicked, Dru-less puppy 'cos I happened to mention her name, and I ruddy well don't need Xander Harris and his mood swings and his rusty excuse for wit and the way he makes me feel like his heart's beating for the both of us when I've got my skin pressed up against his. Sod him. Fuck him. Love him. Hate him._

He found another bottle somewhere near his hand, this time with the cap still on, and he bit it off without vamping out. Didn't look up to see the bartender's reaction, but the taste of his own blood was satisfyingly bitter in Spike's mouth.

*****

Dark. It was dark, then it was light, and he was somewhere kind of fuzzy and indistinct. Floating, and Xander knew he was asleep. Usually he loved these dreams, because they meant he could reach out and control what was going on. For a while, at least, until they slipped away into something else. Floating, and that was nice, that kind of muzzy feeling, like the blood was slipping from his veins and he didn't even care, because it was so good to be held, and there was no fear at all, just his throat bared. Yeah. Vampire caressing him, cool fingers along his pulse points. Smoothing back the little hairs along his temples, tracing the patterns of his skin and tickling that five-o-clock stubble. Touch me there. And there. Kiss my eyelids. Look at me. See _me._ Say it to me. Mean it.

Say it out loud. And he could almost hear it, as he felt ghost-lips against his jaw. Almost hear it in that growling rough accent from wherever he said he was from today. Almost, but not quite. Could hear his own voice say it, could shape the words in that grayish-whitish void, where it was safe enough to say anything he wanted, but couldn't hear them back from the body that held him, from whatever man or demon lived inside.

"Oh, very nice," said a voice that was nothing like his own, nothing like the one he'd been listening for, either. Silver and black and hissing like the rain, and he remembered it. Laughing at him, though he wasn't sure why. "Very impressive. You can even manage to torment yourself in a lucid dream. Has it occurred to you to become a _professional_ victim? I know a very good agent. "

How could she tower above him if she was barely five feet tall? Why was he looking _up_ at the straight fall of long black hair, brown almond eyes, sharp shark smile in the so-pretty face, with the tiny little china-doll body? All wrapped up in black leather that would make any Hellmouth bloodsucker proud, even the one that wasn't holding him anymore, as he stood before her. "What are you doing here? I didn't order any vampires, except the one. Who seems to have disappeared. Maybe I should go look for him."

"You chased him away, don't you remember? Besides, I'm not a vampire, little boy. And I don't have to be invited in when you left the doorway open wide."

"I'm not a little boy, lady."

"Oh no?" Amusement, at him. She thought he was funny. She wanted to buy him from the girls, and why the hell not, they could use the extra spending cash for new textbooks, come fall. Except the fingers reaching out to stroke his chin were cold and warm at once, and sparking like lightning, and reminded him too much of long-nailed digits that had held his head still and told him, once, that his face was a poem. So maybe he didn't want to belong to her. "Are you not, then?" she asked. "Not Spike's little boy?"

"I'm not anybody's little boy." He was six feet tall. He _knew_ he was six feet tall, so why was he wearing blue flannel pajamas with fluffy sheep on them? They weren't even his pajamas, they were Willow's pajamas, or maybe Ally McBeal's pajamas, but they weren't his, and the bare feet sticking out of them weren't his, either. Couldn't be his, because they were so small you could cup them in both of your hands and tickle them, like his mother used to do, a long, long time ago. "I'm not anybody's little boy," he insisted, in a voice that got higher and sharper with each word, "and I'm not Spike's anything. I don't even _like_ Spike."

"Ah, well. That makes it all the better, then."

"For what, exactly?"

She opened her mouth, and he could swear there were rows of teeth behind the ones in front, and he could swear her mouth was full of water, too, like there was a river rushing down her throat, past those white, white teeth. Down into the dark, where he was going, swallowed up by that open cave and the current that was dragging him under, and God, couldn't he ever meet a girl who didn't want to kill him? "The better for me to eat you with, of course," she said.

"Oh, please. You're not the Big Bad. I'm not afraid of you. I've played this Freddy Kreuger game before, with somebody a hell of a lot older than you." Image of something dark, crouching, running in the shadows, reaching for him... He tore his gaze away from her mouth, forced himself to look up at her eyes, and saw the answering blackness there, laughing at him.

She leaned close to him, so close, and laughed with her voice, too, as she whispered, "Yes? Really? Did you win?"

Well... if you counted having your heart ripped out and spending the rest of the night as a bit player in everybody else's dreams, then... er...

She read the uncertainty in his eyes, or on his forehead. She laughed again, and it was all the water in the world rushing into him, roaring in his ears. "You're a liar, little boy. You _are_ afraid, which is very wise. And I think, perhaps, you should run now."

It was dark again, suddenly. He was alone, and there was a road beneath his feet, and she didn't need to tell him twice.

 


	2. Ghost Story

[[Illustration by Maeyan](http://iambicnut.com/stakes/chocogood/rei.jpg)]

_______

Tokyo, 1943.

 

"Tell me a story, Spike," Drusilla begged him again.

But he wasn't in the mood for making something up, even to please her. Not when the hunters had come that close-- close enough that he still had their stink in his nostrils now, as he held her next to him. Not even burying his nose in the perfume of her skin could completely erase it.

They had almost been dust in their own bed. They would have been, if Dru's little friend the Gaki hadn't caught one of the youngest of the vampire hunters napping in the van that had been moving ever closer to the crumbling block of flats where the vamps had set up camp. She'd seen the plans for the raid all mixed up in his dreams, and come floating in to warn them. It had been too close for Spike's taste-- they'd still been yawning and stretching and scrambling for clothes when they heard the footfalls in the corridors.

He was sick of running like rats from these little human boys. Tokyo was supposed to be the vampires' playground, their feasting table. Their European faces were excused by faked-up papers and a good story about being spies for the Japanese government-- with the right details lifted from some bureaucrat's dreams, again by Reikoku. For months, they'd had free reign. It wasn't perfect -- he couldn't get real choccies here, for a start, just those sorry excuses for Smarties that the American G.I.s carried about in their cardboard tubes, and some of the Nip lads had started smuggling in to use for barter -- but it was good. The gutters, such as they were, had run with blood.

He'd grown lazy. He'd allowed himself to forget, for a moment, that there were always things out there that could hurt him, or worse, Dru. It didn't have to be bigger, scarier monsters than they were, though God knew he'd found enough of those, once he'd started taking care of Dru on his own. It didn't have to be monsters at all. He'd forgotten, and his complacency had cost them. From somewhere out in the provinces, a little crusade of stout-hearted farmboys with torches and stakes had appeared with the spring rains. Young, foolishly brave, and armed with the one thing these city cattle didn't have-- knowledge that what they were hunting was real.

"Spike, please? I can't go to sleep without a story. The bad boys come when I close my eyes, and they have fire. It pinches me with its little orange claws, and rips and tears, and hurts when I look at it, because it's too beautiful."

Another monster, then, to add to the collection that already lived in her head. Spike shifted, pulling her closer to him, pushing a stray lock of hair off her forehead. "I can't think of any stories tonight, Dru. 'Less you want a real fairy tale; I could remember one of those, maybe. Snow White?"

  

  1. Though God knew if he started in on that one, he'd have 'Someday My Prince Will Come' running through his head until he managed to get to sleep.   --_Damn Walt Disney, and damn those idiot Nippie soldier-boys who managed to smuggle the flick into the country, and damn me for taking Dru to see it._\--   Inane bloody tunes wormed their way into his brain and stayed there 'til he had to either sing 'em or make something scream just to get the melody out of his ears.
  



"I don't like that story," Dru pouted. "That girl is wicked and cruel to her mummy, who only gave her a lovely apple to help her sleep."

"Perhaps I could tell you a story, then," Reikoku said.

Spike raised one eyebrow at the small female figure who sat tailor-style at the foot of their makeshift bed, floating a few inches off the floor. She was capable of sitting that way for hours, he knew, just watching them, waiting for them to sleep, so she could take what she wanted from their dreams. Had made him nervous, at first-- not that he'd ever minded an audience, waking, sleeping, or shagging, but this one was too still, too quiet when she watched. Gave him the weird feeling she was sucking in everything around her, eating you up without even opening her mouth.

But she didn't seem dangerous. She'd never killed a human in front of them who wasn't already dying. Playing that same Death Angel game that Drusilla had fallen in love with on the little prisoner-of-war island, though Dru had grown weary of it long before they'd escaped to what passed for the mainland. And though she'd shown no qualms about diddling around in a dreaming human's head, slowly pushing them towards the nightmares that were apparently a dream-eater's equivalent to Slayer Blood, Rei had made no such moves on him or Dru .

No manipulation, no attempts to mess about with their heads, that he could tell. Maybe vamp dreams were dark enough already, or maybe she knew Spike would find some way to tear her into little pieces, ghost or not, if she hurt Dru. Bloody well better know, considering he'd laid it out for her in detail right in front of Drusilla. Dru had just laughed, then pulled him to the floor and ripped his clothes off, telling him it was the nicest bedtime story anybody'd ever told her; too bad he couldn't keep his mind still for long enough to think up something similar tonight. Rei had smiled when he threatened her, and said nothing.

Maybe Rei really did think of them as friends, as much as two different sorts of monsters who couldn't really do anything nasty to each other anyway, could be considered friends. He'd gotten used to her ways, anyway; figured out that she could be provoked into talking, if you purposely said something stupid enough that she had to correct you. Teased into laughing, which always made Dru laugh as well, and that was worth anything, now, to hear his princess laugh in this arse-backward city where they, the masters of the hunt, were suddenly the prey. So if Reikoku was willing to entertain Dru when he couldn't get his head straight enough to do it, he wasn't about to turn down the offer.

"Yeah, tell us a bedtime story, why don't you?" he agreed, sitting up a bit and letting Dru use him as a pillow. "Something with lots of blood and gore, for my girl."

"I know many of those," Reikoku agreed, but Dru shook her head.

"No, I want a different story," she said imperiously. "I'm tired of blood and gore." Spike looked at her, wondering if she'd gone irretrievably over the edge, past charmingly insane, and all the way to who are you and what have you done with my dark goddess. She fluttered her eyelashes at him, and he sighed, knowing it wouldn't matter a mite, one way or the other. "Blood can run too much like fire, " she said, swaying just a little in his arms, the way she would when one of her half-cocked visions took over. But this was just Dru being Dru. "It's all red behind my eyes. I want black, tonight. Just cool, black water.

Reikoku seemed to consider this, for a second, then nodded. "I know a story like that." Drusilla clapped, and Spike shrugged. As long as Dru was happy, he didn't care if Rei wanted to recite the entire history of Japan; he'd probably fall asleep halfway through anyway. The Gaki half bowed her head, a little formal conceit that still tickled Spike, and the curtain of her straight black hair hid her face as she began to speak.

*****

"Once, many years ago, there was a girl who lived next to a river. She had feet that were a little too big, from running barefoot in the dirt, and eyes too close together to look like the perfect ladies on her mother's wallscrolls, and she wanted... oh, many things. To be a princess, or a Geisha, or a poet, like the Lady Murasaki. Anything but a chicken farmer's daughter on the banks of the Shinano, whose waters flowed through the province and away to places she would never see, carrying fish and fallen blossoms and the leaves of strange trees from far upstream where she would never travel either.

One day, when she was seventeen, a soldier came riding through the village on a foundering horse. Lost and weary and separated from his troop, he stopped by the river for a drink of water, and she saw him. The man took off the straw hat he had made to shade his face from the sun, and dipped his hands in the cool water. He poured it over himself until his hair lay flat against his head, and she could trace the shape of his skull with her eyes.

From that moment, all other want became nothing, became only this want. The need to touch that skin on his cheeks where the sun had burned it, and see if it was still warm. To be held in front of him on his horse, and ride with him, to wherever he was riding. Or even to stay here, in this little place, where nothing ever moved except the river, as long as he would stay.

He did stay, for a while, because he was lost and his horse was crippled, and her family gave him a place to sleep, food to eat. Gave him one small daughter to follow him about asking questions, chattering endlessly, and one older, to watch him silently. To creep to his bed in the stable at night, and listen to him talk about what lay somewhere down the river. The cities, the people. Silks and gold and the foreign accents of the Gaijin who came from far across an ocean that she could hardly believe existed. Except that she believed him, believed anything he would say when she was wrapped warm in his arms, in a bed of straw.

She believed him when he said that he would take her with him when he went. She believed him when he told her she was more beautiful than any of those silken women in those unseen cities. When he put his hands on her body and said that she smelled of jasmine, though she knew full well she smelled of sweat and chicken droppings, the softness in his voice made her feel that it was true. She believed every word that he spoke, and when he left one dawn, early in the flood season, riding away at the end of a line of soldiers who had come at last to find him, she believed she would go with him.

He laughed at her. Very gently, so gently that she did not understand, for a moment, why he was laughing. He laughed, and kissed her on the forehead, and told her to be a good girl. Then he went, and the rains, as if they had been waiting only for the signal of her tears, came pouring down.

Unable to walk back to the house, to see the sad and knowing face of her mother, she ran to the river. She watched it churn for hours, watched the broken branches that she tossed in, spin and bob in the water, and disappear beneath it. Sucked away somewhere by the hunger of the flood. To follow him downstream, towards the sea? But she knew there was no following, any more than if she had lost what little dignity she had found in herself, and run barefoot after his horse shouting at him to take her along. There was no following. There was only the swirling water, and the darkness.

There was nothing she could do, but fall.

Tripped over a root, she tried to convince herself in the first few moments. Slipped on the muddy bank of the swollen river. But there was no truth in it. She fell of her own accord, plunging through dark waters, cool and sweet. She opened her mouth as she sank beneath the current, drawing it in gladly. She gulped water, chewed mud and stones, wanting, aching, hungry for more. By the time she reached the bottom, she was unsurprised that she had not stopped falling, that the river had no bottom. She was too busy trying to eat.

When she finally landed, she wished that she could have stayed in the dark waters forever. The place where she found herself was dry and hot and full of little flying things that chittered at her and tangled in her hair. In Gaki-do, the hell of the hungry dead, she lived a thousand empty, aching lifetimes, the food becoming filth as it touched her lips, the water turning to fire in her throat. She wanted, and wanted, lost herself in it, until that fallen girl just disappeared. It was someone else who screamed and ran and somehow wanted out enough to rise. Someone else found herself standing a few feet downstream from where she had fallen. The moon above was a mere bite less round than it had been, the ground still muddy from the receding waters, and the one who stood on the bank was the ghost of the river, who named herself Reikawa.

She was hungry still, and the water did not fill her, could not satisfy. Mist, fog, untouched by river or stone, she drifted towards what had been home, trying to consume anything she could find on the way. Anything to fill the void that raged inside her as strongly as the river had raged over the edges of its banks, days or an eternity before. Nothing. Nothing noticed or touched her. The hens and the dog chased each other around the yard, and paid no mind to her as she moved past them. Her mother stared straight ahead, not seeing her as another day was crossed off the ricepaper calendar on the wall.

Not seeing, as what had been her child concentrated, willed herself to be what she had been, and sat human-shaped and hungry at the table. Legs crossed just so, feet bare, waiting for a bowl of rice that was never set before her. Not seeing, or pretending not, mother's eyes dry as the hungry one's were, but her hands shaking as she laid out enough places only for the family that was left. The rice wouldn't move when the ghost tried to steal some from her sister's bowl as she had done so many times in play. Not even a single grain of rice, could she lift to her mouth to see if it would fill the empty place where something else had once resided.

But when they slept, she drifted into the second room where her mother and father lay side by side on pallets stuffed with straw and feathers. When she saw her mother turn away, pull apart from her husband, alone in her dreaming, ah, then. Then she came close, and while her mother shuddered in her sleep, the ghost pressed her mist against salt-wet skin, and tasted. Not the few tears on the wind-reddened cheek, still held half in check even in sleep, but the ones that overflowed the river in her mother's mind. Someone was drowning in it, a girl with eyes too close together, feet too big to please some who would go unnamed. She flailed and gasped for air, long hair floating out around her, then twisting at her throat to strangle her, as if the water had not done a good enough job, by itself.

She should have felt something, the ghost of the river knew. That this was herself, that this was something precious, gone forever. As she touched and tasted, the one who had named herself Reikawa knew only that the sorrow was the finest thing she had ever placed upon her tongue, the guilt more potent than a hundred jars of rice wine. It sucked her in, drew her on, past the little noises, the tiny thrashings of her mother's body, the squeak of fear. She stirred the nightmare with her fingers, churning the dream river until the woman gasped out loudly in her sleep, and finally the water became real, pouring from her eyes. The ghost girl drank of the dream, and that river was cool, dark, delicious. When she had finished, the mother slept peacefully, salt tears drying on her face, but the river ghost was already moving to the next sleeping body, and did not look back.

When she had eaten and drunk her way through the entire village, and realized that the empty place within her was still there, she laughed for many hours, deep in the night. Finally she named herself again, for the thing that pushed her onwards, down the river to the next place: Reikoku. Relentless.

"Hungry."

*****

"That was a lovely story," Drusilla said, and Rei smiled. Bowed. "But there was no princess. All stories should have a princess in them, somewhere. Even if she gets eaten by wolves."

"Later, there was a princess. The ghost met a princess, and her knight," she said. "Who walked in the night with her, and they had many adventures together."

Such a princess looked back at her-- a princess with great dark gray eyes, whose laughter sounded like music in a dark place, whose wide red mouth was as hungry as Reikoku's own. And her knight... Rei floated over to where Spike lay, fast asleep beside his mate, one arm tight around Drusilla's thin shoulders. She brushed her hand across his forehead.

He was dreaming of fire. It licked at the edges of his consciousness, burning him as if he were still human. His paler-than-Gaijin skin reddened and blistered, instead of charring and turning to ash as it would have if the hunters had really caught up with them. His head was filled with the smell and taste of his own burning flesh, but his dream-eyes were fixed straight ahead, on Dru, who screamed and blazed like a candle. Reikoku pulled her hand away, not wanting to see what had not happened, what she had raced across the city to prevent from happening.

"Does he taste good?" Drusilla asked her. "I think so, but I never know if I'm imagining things. I do that sometimes."

"He does." It was true enough, though the dream was nothing special. Spike's night-terrors were a decent meal, perhaps a little sweeter for his woman's presence in them. They were nothing like the heady wine of Drusilla's mad visions, which could be sipped from the air around her, even when she was awake, while she walked and sang and danced on the pavement with Spike. Those, when they happened, left Rei utterly satiated for hours. Satisfied, for the first time in three hundred years.

"It hurts him, though. My boy doesn't like to be hurt, not really. Not like me." Drusilla spoke softly, her eyes clouded as she watched Spike whisper something unintelligible under his breath. "He likes to play games, and he likes to be punished, sometimes, but it's not the same." Her voice turned conspiratorial for a moment. "It's because of Daddy. The King of Clubs made the princess, you see, but her knight was made by the King of Hearts, who fed him chocolate toffees and spanked him when he was good."

Reikoku smiled at the image, and Drusilla smiled back at her, one of the few who had never flinched at the sharpness of her teeth, or ever seemed to fear her at all. "And yet it is you who want him back the more, this creature who beat you and tore you and killed everything that you ever loved in life. You both call for him in the night, but Spike has given up hope of ever finding him, and you..." Drusilla babbled about him constantly, their lost Sire, as if he had been gone only hours instead of decades; as if he had meant to meet them at the pub around the corner, and had just lost track of the time.

"Hope is a lie, and Spike can only lie to other people. Not to himself, not for very long. " There was something of that familiar sweetness in the air now, and Rei moved closer to the vampiress, as her eyes turned darker. "There's no hope for Dru, not for me, but I don't need hope, when I know. We'll find him. Blood and fire and black magic, and I'll dance..." Spike's sleep was becoming more restless, dirty-blond hair falling into his face as he shook his head, denying something, or someone. Dru let him toss for a moment, his arm drawing her closer, then she pulled away, watched it fall by his side. "But Spike hurts. He's going to hurt, again. Again and again and again..."

She hugged her arms tightly around herself, and began to rock. Reikoku moved even closer, reaching a hand to touch Drusilla's hair. It felt like a touch, to her own ghostly fingers, though the tangled curls never moved. Drusilla shivered happily -- she felt something, then, at the stroke of Reikoku's hand. Something.

Spike made some sort of whimper, like a wounded animal, and Drusilla matched the sound in an eerie duet that made Reikoku want to clap her hands over her ears, as if she truly used them to hear, anymore. "Shhh," she said quickly. "Do not worry. I will take his dreams away." She turned to do that, to touch Spike again and eat, instead of just tasting, but Drusilla stopped her.

"It won't make any difference. He won't stop hurting for ages, yet. I'll hurt him, and Daddy will hurt him again... They'll do bad things to my Spike, that hurt his head, hurt his heart...It's lovely, all black and red and blue like lightning, but Spike doesn't like to hurt."

It was like ripe raspberries, the air around her head -- Rei could sense it on what she still sometimes thought of as a tongue. So why did the sound of Drusilla's pain make her want to retch?

"But it will stop. You said so, that it would stop," she said, trying to soothe the distress from that voice. Rei floated, poised, between them. Ready to partake of Drusilla's sweetness. Ready to tear herself away from that to bite away the pain of Dru's sleeping lover, little as she cared about Spike himself, beyond the meal.

"Someday. There's a little boy in my head, with big black eyes. There's words on his face, but I can't read them. I get lost, when I try to read them, and my William has such bad handwriting; I shall have to smack his hands for it. Did you know that there's a rhyme for orange, if you say it in French?" Reikoku waited patiently, having grown used to Dru's apparent lack of sense, and after a second, she continued. "He's for Spike, like Spike was for me, and he'll make it all right. But there's no little boy, not yet. He's just a story." As if Drusilla had forgotten that it had been she who stopped Rei in the first place, she pouted accusingly at the Gaki. "And Spike hurts."

"Then, for now, I shall make it better," Rei said, and put her hand back on Spike's forehead, dissolving into smoke. Telling herself not for the first time that she wasn't doing this for wide gray eyes and a red mouth with the beautiful nonsense of a thousand bloody fairy tales spilling from it. Not for that. Only for the taste of Dru's visions. Nothing more.

 

*****

Los Angeles, 2000

The boy with the dark eyes stood on the balcony, railing at the sky, and the rain, and Spike, and himself. Himself the most of all, though it was Spike's name called out to the darkened air with a hundred curses attached to it. Some of which the boy must have learned from the vampire, Reikoku decided, unless 'knocked-kneed Limey guttersnipe' had become the newest southern California teen sound byte.

When he finished shouting, he laughed. Laughed long enough that Reikoku wondered if he'd given himself a new name, by the time he finally stopped. If he had, he didn't speak it aloud. He turned off the lights and crawled into the bed and buried his face in the pillow, and let his body shake.

When his breathing finally slowed, she walked out of the darkness and traced a misty finger down his cheek. There were no tears to touch. She placed her hand on his forehead. With no one watching to shy away at the sharpness of her teeth, she smiled, and let her body turn to fog as she tumbled down into his dreams.

They tasted of burnt chocolate, and fear.

 


	3. Our Kind of People

"Tara? Please?" Willow was doing the 'I'm a good girl, I am,' act, which would normally have her girlfriend fetching whatever it was for her before she even named it, but this time Tara saw through her evil plan. The blonde shook her head resolutely as they walked past the Main Ops table in the lobby.

"No more coffee. You made me promise not to let you." Not that Tara could actually stop her, or would, if she really wanted some. But it was a game they'd been playing all day-- keep Willow away from the caffeine, don't let her get kidnapped by the strange, gnome-like men who run the computer gaming room, don't let her spend next semester's tuition money on X-rated fan fiction and battery-operated Star Wars toys... Tara had only been moderately successful at the last one, as evidenced by the bags they were both holding, but she was determined to do her best on the coffee issue. "You said I should drag you away by force, if you even looked at anything that smelled that good, ever again."

"But that was yesterday. Today they have kahlua hazelnut cream..."

"And given that it's already tonight, you'll be bouncing off the walls until...tomorrow. Nope. Sorry. Can't do it." She looked sternly at her girlfriend. Well, tried to. "Wouldn't be prudent. Not at this juncture."

"You're mean," Willow pouted. Tara shook her head again, smiling, then stopped as she heard the words echoed-- in a lower voice. She looked around, wondering if she'd imagined it.

"What?" Willow asked. When the phrase was repeated _again_, she looked around as well.

It was coming from the open door to the sports bar. They walked over, recognizing the familiar tones if not the half-slurred pout. Tara, at least, had never heard Spike sound like this before. "You're mean. I don't like you. And, if you don't mind my commentin' on your sartorial standards or lack thereof, your mum dresses you funny."

"I don't care how mean you think I am, buddy. Twelve of _anything_ is the limit, around here. Even that stuff." The bartender sounded adamant, and Spike was making growling noises. Which, if he wasn't already in vamp face...could be an interesting experience for the locals. Tara looked at Willow, who was giving her the same look back: "Ulp." They hurried in.

"Well, hey, if it ain't Goldilocks and Lil' Red Riding Hood. Come to rescue the Big Bad from a life of drunken debauchery?" Spike looked up at them human-faced from where he sat at the bar. There were a slew of empty brown bottles lined up in front of him, and one clutched firmly in his hand. "Hate to break it to you, but I'm not drunk. Can't get drunk on Woodpecker; s'not possible."

"Oh, God," Willow groaned under her breath. Tara shot her a questioning glance. "You remember that whole Drusilla thing, at lunch?" she whispered. Tara nodded. "Last time he got all mopey over her, he tried to stake himself. The time before that, he kidnapped me and Xander and wanted me to do a love spell to get her back. He got all drunk and weepy and slobbery. It was honestly hard to remember that--"

"He has excellent hearing?" Spike said. Willow tried the innocent-me look on _him_ , but he didn't seem to care one way or the other. He really didn't look drunk, Tara thought. Not if drunk was her brother Donny after a bottle and a half of White Lightning, passed out in the back of his truck. Even Spike's pouting seemed to be intended more to give the bartender a hard time; there was a hard, sharp glint in his eye, as if he were laughing inwardly at a particularly ironic joke. He threw a bill down on the bar, but made no move to get up. "There-- I've paid up; not like I'm trying to get you to run a tab, or something. Give me another."

"I _told_ you, sir. You've reached our limit; it doesn't have anything to do with your ability to pay." The bartender, dressed not at all funnily in a standard vest-and-bow-tie uniform, looked beseechingly at Willow and Tara. "He belong to you two? You might think about getting him back to your room, assuming you're staying here. If not, for God's sake don't let him drive."

Willow stepped forward, just as Spike was letting out another almost-not-human growl. "I guess he belongs to us. In the sense that we're responsible for turning him loose on the world, as opposed to killing him. Don't worry, he's not driving anywhere, not tonight. Come on, Spike."

Spike gave her a disbelieving look, but stood up. Probably more because the bartender had his arms crossed and was obviously not about to hand over another bottle, than because of anything Willow had said. He still addressed her, though, as he grabbed his coat from the stool next to him and slipped it on. "I told you, mummy dearest-- I'm not drunk. Took about a case of Jack to get me to the point where I'd actually stoop to...er... asking you for help, last year. _And_ I managed to drive into town quite well on that, thank you."

Willow rolled her eyes and yanked on his arm. "That's really encouraging, Spike. And they wonder why I don't have a car, when there's people like you on the road."

He accompanied them out of the bar, shooting a final nasty gesture at the bartender-- at least, Tara assumed it wasn't meant to be a peace sign-- with his free hand. "You can let go my arm, Red. I'm fully capable, you know," he said as they approached the main elevator bank.

"Of making a scene and getting us all kicked out of here? I don't doubt it. Come on, let's go back to the room. You can have some blood, and try to get less not-drunk, and cry on our shoulders about Dru. We'll feed you chocolate chip pudding, if you're good."

Spike stopped in front of the elevators and shook his arm free of Willow's. Gently, Tara noticed, though whether he had any concern for Willow's feelings, or was just avoiding a brain-zap, she couldn't be sure. "I'm _not_ good. And I'm not drunk, for the third and probably not final time. And I'm sure as _hell_ not goin' back up there, not for chocolate pudding -- not even for a fucking Klondike bar. "

Tara pressed the 'Up' button, then turned back to look at him. "Why not?"

Spike shrugged and looked off into the distance, where they were taking down most of the large convention displays in preparation for closing ceremonies in the morning. "His Royal Highness mightn't be through with his afternoon nap, and god forbid he should wake up and see _me_. Might chew my head the rest of the way off."

Tara had wondered, of course, when Xander had taken off after snapping at Spike. Whether there was something more than a bad hair day happening. But she couldn't exactly have asked either of them, even if it _were_ any of her business, since she wasn't supposed to know there was anything to ask about. They were grown-ups; they didn't need a nosy witch interfering in their private affairs. So she'd gone about the business that _was_ hers -- following Willow around the convention and watching her face light up when something took her back to a time when all the bad things in the world were safely locked behind a glass tv screen, and there was always Xander standing in front of the sofa to protect her if life got too scary.

"Not that his teeth are any sharper than his wits, of course." Spike's last-minute comment startled Tara out of her Willow-thoughts. He _sounded_ jokey enough, but the expression on his face when he looked back at them was anything but. Just for a second. Then Tara watched as it melted away, just the way his vamp face did when he turned human, to be replaced by something smug and familiar. And fake.

Willow didn't seem to notice the quicksilver change, but she'd heard the words, at least. "All right, I've had just about enough of this. I don't know what's with _either_ of you two, but you're going to talk like civilized grown-ups if I have to levitate you both upside down off the balcony." When one of the elevators chimed, she grabbed Spike's arm again, and practically dragged him through the open door. Tara followed, trying not to giggle at the sight of her hundred pound girlfriend manhandling a supernaturally strong male vampire into the elevator.

"We _talked_ already, thanks," Spike snapped. The acid in his tone made Tara flinch, and dissolved any thought of laughing at him. "Your mate made it pretty clear that he doesn't want to see hide nor hair of my hide nor hair. Which is just fine with me. I'd rather call Angel and grovel for a ride, than set foot back in Harris' room, or Harris' car, or Harris' grotty little basement. I get my car back, in fact, and I'm out of here. I've no doubt the rejoicing will last long into the night, when the Slayer finds out I'm not coming back to Sunnydale."

"Excuse me? You're not coming back with us?"

Tara could see the unspoken 'And why am I actually upset about that?' flit across Willow's face and disappear without a trace. _Come on, Willow, you've gotta figure this out soon..._

"What part of it was too difficult for your college-educated brains to process?" The bitterness was almost tangible, and Tara took an involuntary step back as she watched the vampire clench his jaw and snort in response to Willow's question. His accent was different, too -- not as rough around the edges; it made 'college-educated' sound less like a jealous snipe, and more like a part of that sharp-edged inside joke to which only he knew the punchline.

"Just because Xander threatened to stick a stake in you?" Willow asked him. "I admit the placement suggestion was kind of...um...unusual, but he says stuff like that to you all the time. You're bailing over Xander having a bad day? I thought you guys were... friends, kind of."

Spike laughed, a single painful bark. Tara found that it actually hurt something in her stomach to hear it, and to watch his mouth twist up. "Friends? You've _got_ to be kidding. What does it take to get through to you people that I'm evil? Bad? A person of some taste and refinement? I don't have _friends_, and if I did, they sure as hell wouldn't include an unemployed mouth-breather who lives in his parents' basement, collects comic books, thinks he's doing the world a favor by helping a bitchy little blonde twit save it every so often, and has the gall to consider _me_ more pathetic than _him_." He snorted again, then looked down at the ground to avoid Willow's startled stare, and Tara's disturbed one.

This wasn't the cocky braggart they'd gone bowling with, or the calm, concerned guy she'd heard softly talking Xander back to sleep last night. It was a Spike whom Tara didn't recognize, distant and hurting and awkward with his lover's supposedly clueless friends. And there was nothing Tara could say to comfort him, if she could even figure out what was wrong, without giving their secret away to Willow.

What was bothering her so much about this? Why did she care if whatever relationship the demon had with the human crumbled under its own weight? What business was it of hers? A nasty little voice was laughing at her, somewhere down in her soul. It sounded just a little like Donny, the summer before she'd run to California, when she'd tried to tell him why she couldn't stay, without actually saying outright that she was running away.

_Things like that just ain't meant to work out. There's that kind of people, and our kind of people, and you know damn well which kind you are. But you don't believe that. You never believed that. So why would you care about some demon, Tara-girl? None of your concern. Nothing to do with you. Just keep believing that, and maybe it'll be true. Just keep yourself to yourself, and no one will ever know what you are._

To drown out the words, some of them imagined, some of them with the weight of memory behind them, she said to Spike, "You went after him, didn't you. And you got in an argument."

"Oh, ten out of ten for the quiet one." He shrugged, just one shoulder. It somehow made his body look as twisted up as his voice sounded. "You lot spend so much time forgetting I'm not your _friend_, I just about got sucked into the glorious fantasy m'self. S'pose I ought to thank 'im for the reminder." The bell dinged, and the doors opened. "But I don't think I will, somehow. Your stop, ladies."

"Oh no, you don't." Willow, who hadn't let go of Spike's arm since she'd yanked him into the elevator, pulled on it again. This time he stood still and looked at her with a crooked little smile. Willow frowned and stuck her foot in the door. They stood there that way, Tara trapped in the corner with two stubborn faces between her and the exit, until...

BUZZZZZZZZ...

The elevator's alarm continued to scream at them as Willow stood with her shoe against the doorguard, smiling, and Spike clapped one hand to his ear, grimacing. With a muttered obscenity, he finally stumbled forward into the hallway. Willow followed, triumphant, and Tara shook her head. Spike should have known by now-- no one out-stubborned Willow Rosenberg. At least no one besides Miss Kitty, who didn't really count, since she had that unfair supernatural cuteness power going for her.

"Come on," Willow was saying as she led him down the hall towards their room. "You two are going to _actually_ talk. None of this crap about 'Oh, we're men, we don't do that kind of thing, grunt, grunt, let's either watch football and bond by leering at the cheerleaders, or never speak to each other again'. Xander doesn't have enough guy friends as it is, and I'm not gonna watch him lose one-- even an evil, annoying one-- over something this stupid. He's got stuff on his mind, you know. Not everything is about you..."

Tara resisted the impulse to bang her own head against the wall as Willow continued. _No, they're exchanging death threats over whether Commander Riker was cuter pre-beard, or post. Come on, hon! Figure this out so I can talk to you about it without feeling guilty._

"Fine, leave off, witch. I'll go in." Spike was still trying to shake himself free of Willow's mom-grip. "Just to get my gear, then I'm out of here. Sun's down, not that it ever came out, that I could tell..." Willow wasn't letting go, so Tara hung back, fishing her card key out of her purse. "In fact, you could just go in and fetch it for me..." Spike wheedled.

Tara was careful to look at the floor while she rolled her eyes. Then she nudged Willow and Spike out of the way. As she began to swipe her key in the lock, something pushed at her mind. At her senses. Gently wiggled her memory like a loose tooth. Tara backed away from the door and stared at it.

Spike stopped his attempts to squirm out of Willow's grasp, and stared at _her_. "What? Space-age code-key on the fritz? Happy to break the door down for you, considering Angel would have to pay for it."

Tara shook her head, still looking at the door. Something was wrong. More wrong, that is, than Spike's and Xander's personal problems. She just couldn't pin down what it was. Except it was something in that room. Weird. Familiar, and yet not. Itching at her to do something she didn't want to do, not blind, not like this, but... She also didn't want to open that door-- and she wanted to know why.

Carefully, Tara put her hand on the wood and felt-- not with her fingers, but with her mind.

'Easy, easy...' Tara could hear her mother's memory-voice telling her, as she held a closed wooden box in her hands. Something had moved inside it, and she'd almost dropped it. 'Relax. Just close your eyes and feel-- you know what's in there. You've touched it, you've smelled it, you've seen it in the sunlight. Now just reach past the wood, and tell me what it is.' So she had reached with her eyes closed and her small ten-year-old fingers on the old cigar box, and felt scale and smelled dust and heard the hiss, and seen the electric-green smudge that was the garter snake's aura. Her mother had listened to her excited laughter, then proudly opened the box, to let the little snake slide into Tara's hands.

Tara reached again, in the white hallway of a hotel ten years later, and what was inside the room bit at her like a coiled rattler. She yanked her hand away. "Something's in there," she whispered, before her tongue seemed to stop working altogether.

"Well, _that_ was ominous," Spike sneered. "Cue cheesy incidental music..." Willow smacked him on the arm.

"What do you mean, honey?" Willow looked at Tara, her motherly irritation with Spike immediately replaced by a questioning expression. "Something's in there, like, big mucous-shooting demon that tried to kill Angel, something? Or something, like, Xander changing clothes, don't walk in on him, something? And don't you say a _word_, Spike."

The vampire said nothing, though Tara wasn't sure why he _would_ \-- not that she could get her brain to work right enough to think her own thoughts, much less try to understand Willow's. Tara shook her head, turning back to face them while still trying to frame a sentence properly again. The jolt she had experienced was almost electrical, and it felt like it had scrambled her brains. Yes, Xander was in there; she'd felt his now-familiar aura in the room as well, but it was dampened. Muffled.

Spike was already frowning, and now his face rippled into its bumpy, toothy demon-form. He sniffed the air carefully, then shook his own head, his vampire-face not showing the misplaced relief that Tara heard in his voice. "Nothing in there but the kid. Maybe he's not the only one who needs a nap, eh, witch?"

Finally, Tara was able to speak. "Your friend from last night," she said, looking into bright yellow eyes. "The ghost. _She's_ in there with Xander."

Willow looked back at Tara. "Are you sure?"

She nodded. Behind the biting zap that had knocked her back into her own head, there had been the same creepy feeling that she'd felt in the hallway last night. Impossible to describe properly: curiosity and not-quite-human-amusement, and something else. Something that had made her just grab Willow's hand and chant, "I am not an Extra-Value Meal," over and over in her head.

What she'd felt just now had the same signature, came from the same creature, but that was the only similarity. The amusement was gone, replaced with irritation at her interference, slapping at her as if she were some kind of annoying bug. The 'something else' was no longer hidden behind a mask of politeness-- it was hunger. Pure, open, greedy hunger. And it wasn't directed at Tara.

Spike gave her a disgusted look. "If Rei's in there, why didn't you just say so? She probably dropped by to gas on about old times. Worry us over nothing, why don't you. Not that I was worried."

Tara grabbed his arm. "You d...don't unders...s...stand..." She bit her lip. Why did the damned stutter have to come out _now_, of all times? "Xander... She's doing something to him." There. She'd got it out. If that was all she could say, so be it -- Spike would do something now. He had to. He wouldn't let some stupid fight -- _And the fact that, as Spike's pointed out himself on more than one occasion, he's a selfish, evil demon?_ \-- stop him from going to help the one person in the world who was making him almost human. Would he?

Spike stared at her for a moment, and what passed between their eyes was a mystery, even to Tara. All she knew was that after that moment, Spike blinked, then shook her off, grabbing her door key from her hand. He jammed it into the slot, and yanked it out without waiting for the beep, which came a second later.

Spike pushed the door open quickly. The room was in partial darkness, the spill of light from the hallway only reaching a few feet into the little alcove inside the doorway-- and it was cold. The curtains and glass door were open at the other end of the room, letting in very little city light, but plenty of chilling rain. Spike strode past the mirrored closet and into the room. "Reikoku?"

Willow said, "Xander?" at the same time. There was no response from anyone, though Tara heard a muted crunching sound. She flipped the light on and walked in, then stood blinking at the scene before her, trying to take it in.

Spike stood in the middle of the room, his booted foot crushing Xander's black fedora, which had been lying on the carpet. Xander lay curled up under the covers of one double bed. Around him-- or maybe, over him, was a pulsing gray cloud of smoke. Thick enough to move and almost shine in the overhead light, but still translucent enough that Tara could make out Xander's face, pale on the pillow, hair drenched in sweat.

"Rei, get off him," Spike said, low and dangerously reasonable. "You want a snack, there's a nice little pub on the ground floor, serves spicy barbecue wings and beernuts. Can't say much for the barkeep, but the menu's not bad. Better than undercooked human, anyway, especially that one. What say you and me, we head down there and..." His stream of babble, a near match for Willow on a good day, ran on as he neared the bed, Willow and Tara behind him.

"Xan," he said quietly when he got there. There was no movement from Xander. Then, "Shit." Spike bent down, reaching out to touch the cloud, or maybe Xander's shoulder. "Fuck. Fuck, stupid...this is all my fault. Xan?"

Things happened far too quickly to make any sense. Spike's hand made contact with the Gaki. Tara heard a sizzling sound, then a loud crack.

There was a flash of light -- white fire in the air -- and the vampire flew backwards onto the opposite bed. The scent of ozone filled Tara's lungs for a second, then disappeared.

Willow ran towards Xander, and Tara grabbed her around the waist before she got too near the bed. "No, don't. "

"Let go of me, Tara. That thing is hurting Xander." Willow struggled in her arms. The gray blanket of mist shimmered, then was still, as was Xander. On the other bed, Spike lay just as motionless.

"I don't know what she's doing, exactly. But if you try to touch her, she might hurt _you_ \-- we can at least learn from Spike's mistakes."

Willow stopped fighting, and was stiff against Tara's body. She stared at the fog-shrouded form on the bed for what seemed like hours, before Tara felt safe enough to relax her tight hold, finally sure that the other woman wouldn't blindly bolt towards her best friend no matter the danger. "Spike's mistakes." Willow finally broke her gaze away from Xander to glare briefly at the vampire. "Like the one where he says 'Oh, she's harmless, she can't do anything bad to you unless you're already sick?"

Tara sighed. "Willow, I don't think he would have said that if he hadn't thought it was true."

"Right, because Spike never lies, especially when he's trying to make himself look better by making Xander feel like an idiot. Big undead jerk." Willow pulled free. Walked across and stood over Spike. She reached down and felt his forehead, then shook her head. "Oh, ignore me. I know it's not Spike's fault, not really. I'm just ... What on earth am I feeling for here-- a pulse? A fever? If he were dead-dead, he'd be dust in the wind." She shook him for a moment, with no discernible result. "Why on earth did he _do_ that? I mean, I know why _I_ would have, but why Spike?"

Tara bit her lip, unsure whether to answer that or not. Our kind of people, she heard her brother say again. Heard her father say it, first, which was where Donny got it from. But their mother had said something else, the one time she'd caught her son talking like that. Something that he'd seemed to listen to, at the time, though he'd forgotten it soon enough, after she died.

Then Willow turned around to look at Xander, without waiting for Tara to answer, if she'd ever really expected one. Her eyes were as gray and cloudy as the fog for a moment; then they cleared. Something sparked in them. "Wind...maybe..." Willow's brow furrowed in concentration. She cleared her throat. "Maestro, Greco, Africus, Syroco..." she whispered. Tara felt power building between Willow's outstretched hands, like the air in a lightning storm, before the thunder cracks. "Winds of the cross corners, blow..."

Nothing, then a small sound of ruffling paper. A breeze tugged at Tara's skirt, playing lightly with the fabric. Then something strong pushed past her, whipping her hair into her face and blowing the curtains open. A stack of brightly colored flyers lived up to their name, as they escaped out the open sliding door and into the rain, disappearing off the balcony. Tara watched the strange mist that covered Xander, and lent Willow what power she could, just by reaching over and taking her hand. It seemed for a second that the fog got lighter, that she could see Xander's sleeping frown more clearly. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the air died down and the room was still.

"Well, that was a rousing success." Willow laughed nervously, then stopped, as if she was afraid she wouldn't be able to if she didn't cut herself off now. Tara knew how she felt.

"Spike said she couldn't be directly hurt by magic," she reminded Willow, who was staring dumbly at the writhing gray mass that surrounded Xander. It was back to its original thickness, as if nothing had happened at all, as if it was laughing at their display of arcane ability. Tara put her arms around Willow once again, holding tightly to the slim body as Willow leaned her head back on Tara's shoulder.

"Spike said she couldn't hurt anybody else, too. And look at him." The vampire was utterly still, pale skin almost shining against the navy-blue comforter. "Spike, wake up!" Nothing. Xander tossed slightly in the other bed, looking just as unnaturally white as his lover, behind the shifting gray covering. Tara blinked, as she saw Spike move, finally-- to make exactly the same motion. Willow noticed it too, and squeezed her arm. "Tara...can I be scared? Just for a minute?"

How many times had Willow been in this situation, a friend in trouble and no idea what was happening, just that she had to do something? How often had there been no one there whom Willow would dare to ask that question of, since she always had to be the smart one? The one who always had a plan, even when her mouth babbled nonsense while her mind came to its own conclusions? Tara stroked Willow's arm with one hand and nodded against her skull, the fine red hair brushing her nose.

"Uh-huh. You can be scared. It's okay." They stood there for a while just holding each other, before Willow shook herself, and picked up the phone.

A few minutes later, they were sitting on the bed next to Spike. Waiting. "He's not like us," Willow said, as she looked at the motionless vampire. "He's not _supposed_ to do stupid things like that. So why did he?"

Tara didn't answer -- she just took Willow's hand in her own, and repeated her mother's words, in her head. 'Listen to me, child. Your daddy's right, there's two kinds of people. But you can't tell by looking at them -- it doesn't matter if they're white or black or live on the wrong side of town or got horns and a tail. None of that's worth a tinker's damn. The only kinds of people who make any difference in this world are the people who are too afraid to love each other, and the other kind. Our kind of people.'

Tara breathed, and Willow breathed, and Xander breathed, and Spike didn't. And they waited.

 


	4. Little Things

"Fuck." Simple. Good. Gutteral. Something nice girls didn't say. Willow said it again. Then she pounded on the table -- in lieu of smashing her fists against her laptop's keyboard- and added a few words in Swahili that hopefully meant what she thought they meant: something obscene but harmless, and not 'please turn me into a hairy three-eyed snot-monster.' She glanced down at her hands and didn't see any hair or snot, so she assumed she'd been right.

Tara looked up at her, startled, from where she sat on the bed next to Spike's stretched-out body. Or should that be corpse? Eww. Willow shuddered just a bit -- which was utterly silly for somebody who'd been spending years dealing with them in one form or another, and this was a body she _knew_. Still, laid out like that, unresponsive to touch or shaking or yelling, or _anything_ except Xander's involuntary sleep-movements, which Spike continued to match like a freaky synchronized swimmer -- could you have synchronized sleeping? Anyway, he looked more corpse-like than usual, and that, along with everything else, was freaking Willow out.

"Sorry," she said. "Just... there's nothing in here about Gakis at all. At least not that I can find, but the search system is so screwy... And 'Demons, Demons, Demons' -- what kind of name is that for a database, anyway? It's like the Disney version of a real occult knowledge system. It even has a children's section. Which is _so_ cute, if I wanted to teach my kid how to play 'How Many Horns Does A Hrontak Have' -- but right now? Whoever programmed this thing is seriously making my frog-turning finger twitch." Which wasn't the finger she was tempted to flip at the screen.

She looked up to find Tara blinking at her, an awkward 'help me, I don't want to have to have her put away' smile hovering over her lips. Then, without a word spoken between them, her lover was next to her. Strong, sure hands massaged her shoulders, pressing and sliding over muscles that Willow just now realized ached like she'd been holding up a medium-sized planet, instead of sitting hunched over a computer. "Maybe you need to take a break."

Willow sighed and gazed at the laptop again. She thumped the table one last time, more or less for good luck, then nodded. "I know. I'm not really thinking straight anymore, by the time I start threatening grievous bodily injury to nameless database programmers. Wesley's coming with books. Books are good. Books are our friends. Especially stolen-from-the-Watchers'-Council books."

"I think 'indefinite loan' was the phrase he used on the phone." Fingers digging between her shoulderblades, reaching for a tension that Willow couldn't _quite_ let go of.

"Yeah, Giles has some 'indefinite loan' books too. I wonder if the disgruntled ex-Watcher and the unemployed librarian battle it out in his psyche at night, sending each other overdue notices." On the screen, the little dancing Parvo-demon that was supposed to be retrieving the answer to her query on dream-eaters was still dancing. It had been dancing for the last five minutes. She suspected it was sticking its tongue out at her, too, but the gif image was too small to be absolutely certain. _It's always the little things that get to you, in the end._ She gave in to the temptation, and flipped it off.

"Willow..."

She looked up at Tara, and sighed, reaching for one of those magical massage hands, because holding it seemed more important, right now. "I'm just... frustrated, I guess. There's nothing I can _do_. None of the spells I know have worked, so I can't help with magic, at least not until Wesley gets here. And Willow the Computer Wiz if ever a Wiz there was? Bupkis. She is Bupkis-Woman. I feel useless. Like I'm just waiting for the grownups to show up and tell me what to do."

Willow felt Tara's other hand stop rubbing at her shoulders, and wrap itself around her in a hug. "Yeah. I know how you feel. I wish I knew anything that might help. All the dream spells I can remember require a willing, conscious subject -- and they're mostly about controlling dreams. Staying lucid so you can explore them. Or charms to keep away bad dreams in the first place. Nothing about waking people up, or fighting monsters."

Willow stood, turned, and rested her forehead against Tara's. Not the only one. It was hard to remember that, when nothing seemed to be working and she felt like a little girl tugging on her mother's skirt -- me, me, I can do something too, I'm big now... But she wasn't the only one who felt like this, and she wasn't alone.

"You are helping, Tara. Just by being here. You being with me is everything. Don't ever think that it's not." Just to have warm arms encircling her, soft breath blowing her hair across her face, large, serious eyes looking into hers, with 'I'll do anything for you' written in letters three feet high across those dark blue irises... "I'm sorry this weekend turned out to be so crazy. It was supposed to be about us, and... it's gone all Scooby. Not in the 'have fun with your friends' sense -- in the 'monster stops in to ruin your popcorn and pizza party nine times out of ten' sense."

"No, I loved it. It was great. I mean, _this_ isn't great, but... you know what I mean." Tara pulled her head back a little so that Willow was looking at her whole face, instead of just a close-up, magnified view of her eyes. "I like your friends. I liked the convention stuff. I like being with you, no matter where we are or what's happening. 'Cause I love you. Even when you're high on coffee or growling insanely at nameless database programmers."

Willow couldn't help looking back at the laptop, to see the demon still dancing. When she looked back at Tara, there was an apology on her lips, for what she hadn't said back right away -- but Tara's finger got there before she could utter it.

"Don't be stupid. I know. You're just worried about Xander."

And she was. More than anything else, more than the frustration with the computer or the magic or herself, Willow was worried about Xander. _But just about the little things. Whether he'll ever find something as simple and right as Tara feels in my arms. Whether he'll ever get a haircut, before his bangs reach down to his nose. Whether he'll ever wake up again. Just the little things. _

"Yeah." She walked over to look at him, Tara's arm still around her shoulder. His hair was tangled and sweat-matted on the pillow. His uncomfortable movements had knocked the blanket down into a crumpled mess around his chest, and Willow's hand moved towards him, some ridiculous mom-instinct urging her to pull it up to his chin. The gray mass of fog around him surged in her direction, and she snatched her hand away as the image of Spike flying backwards onto the other bed flashed through her head. "I hate this. He seems so... helpless. You know, he's the one who always protected _me_ from whatever I was afraid of, when we were little. He even tries to protect Buffy, like _she_ needs it."

In a voice that Willow knew was designed to calm her down and make her think straight, and usually succeeded, Tara asked, "I thought Xander was always getting into situations like this. I mean, not that it's his fault. Just that he has really bad luck when it comes to getting got by whatever bad thing is around."

"Yeah -- he does have a tendency to attract dangerous attention. I'm not sure if he's a weirdness-magnet, or he sends off 'hurt me' pheromones, or what. But I hate it. I've always hated it. And this... sucks. Which is all my highly-developed vocabulary can come up with at the moment. Can't the bad things leave us alone, for a weekend? A few days? I just want... "

Little things. _Wake up, Xander. Crack a joke. Brush my hair. Tell me who you're in love with. Tell me it's some bagboy at the Food Mart, tell me it's Giles, tell me it's Regis Philbin. I won't care who. I won't tell anybody, not even Tara. I promise. Just wake up._ Little things.

"I just want things to go right." Whatever that meant. Willow backed off when she felt her fingers itching to reach for the edge of that dark blue comforter again, and sat down on the bed next to Spike. The 'ack, it's a dead body' thing was gone now, probably just a product of her irritation with herself, which a Tara-cuddle had done a lot to bring down to a manageable level. Tara stood in front of her, long hair slipping out from behind her ear and fanning over her face.

"Do you think we should try calling Mr. Giles again?"

Why not. At least it would give her something to do, aside from think of things that she couldn't do anything about, and things she didn't know what to do about. Last time, right after she'd called Angel, she'd got no answer at Giles' place, but she couldn't imagine what would keep him out of his apartment for very long. Unless he and Olivia had gone on a date somewhere -- but from the vibes she'd been getting on Friday night, Willow thought it was more likely that he hadn't planned for them to leave the apartment all weekend.

She nodded, and started to stand up and reach for the phone, then looked at the silver cord that ran across the room to the little table and her cheerfully click-whirring laptop. "Or not. I don't want to try getting into that database again if we go offline. It took fifteen minutes just to get through their login procedures, the last time. Maybe I should go downstairs and use the pay phone?"

Tara gave half a nod, then stopped. "Doesn't Spike have Wesley's cell-phone on him?"

Er... touch Spike? Not that the thought bothered Willow anymore -- it just hadn't even occurred to her that she could, since the first time she'd shaken him and he hadn't woken up. But there was no gray cloud around _him_ that could make zappy moves at her if she tried to pull the blanket up to _his_ chin. Not that she could, since he was lying on top of it, and what insane brain cell had made her think about tucking Spike in? Spike was the Big Bad, even if he _was_ sleeping the sleep of the just zapped with a million-volt cattle prod right now. He didn't need mothering.

Except he really looked like he did, the confusing, irritating jerk. He was frowning now; Willow glanced across to the other bed and tried to peer through the cloud of fog to see if Xander was as well. She couldn't tell. When she looked back at Spike, his face was blank. Unlined except for a few little ones around his eyes and mouth. Smooth looking Oil-of-Olay-for-the-undead skin, that translucent color that makeup companies called 'ivory' and Willow called 'fish-belly-white' when she saw it in the mirror. Spike's skin was even whiter than hers; the silver-blond of his hair would have shaded right into it without a pause for the eye, if his roots weren't growing out.

He looked nakeder now, in three layers of clothes including boots and a jacket, than he had last night in the bathroom wearing nothing but a smirk and a tattoo. With his face slack in sleep, Spike could have been any innocent collegiate geek, all tuckered out after a weekend of gaming and autograph-hunting. He wasn't anything like innocent -- she knew it. Just because she'd gone bowling with him, didn't mean she didn't know he was a killer. She'd seen him yellow-eyed and snarling, with blood on his lips. Waving a broken bottle in her face. Pushing her down on her own bed with death in his eyes and only the chip, the magical, wonderful, terrible chip, had saved her. Not like she'd forgotten any of that, or ever could. But he didn't _look_ like a monster, now.

"He looks so..."

"Human?"

"I was gonna say 'young.' You know, for all his Big Bad B.S., he doesn't really look much older than any of us." Willow studied the shadows under his closed eyes, and below his cheekbones. "But yeah. He looks human, too. Acts human, a lot of the time. I guess that's why we forget he's not. That he's a demon, and he doesn't think like us."

Though if he didn't -- why had he sounded like the inside of his throat was being torn out when he saw Xander lying there asleep with this obscene gray thing pulsing all over him? Why had he said, "Fuck, this is all my fault..." ? Why had he sounded like he actually cared? Why had he reached out to touch Xander? Heck, why was he here at all, attending a convention he didn't care about with people he swore he hated, just so he could end up lying on this bed all sick and pale and small, even for a dead guy? It still didn't make any sense to her.

She reached slowly into his inside breast pocket, which contained a lump that she assumed was Wesley's cell-phone, and was struck by the fact that his chest didn't rise and fall. _Well, duh..._ But it was disconcerting. Nothing moved, nothing twitched when she grasped the phone and slid it out -- or tried to. It was stuck on, or under, something in the pocket: a stack of cards or small papers, sharp enough to give her a paper cut as her fingers slid along one edge. Willow sighed and pulled the whole mess out, phone included, before putting her finger in her mouth and sucking on it.

"What's that?"

She disentangled the stack of card-things from the flip part of the cell-phone, and turned them over. Then blinked. Then stared. Then blinked again. "Photographs." Spike carried snapshots around in his pocket? How human _was_ he? Though they were probably all shots of Drusilla, she realized after a second. That _would_ be like him, to carry them around and pull them out to mope over when he was feeling morose.

There were three: a wallet-sized one on the bottom, and two square polaroids on top. One of which had bitten her; there was a drop of her blood still on the edge of it. _Vampire photos. Snort. Hellmouth humor at its best._ She wiped it off with the hem of her t-shirt and studied it, frowning.

"Is that a Dairy Queen coupon?" Tara was asking as she leaned over to peer at the picture.

_You'd think so, with the mounds of whipped topping and the chocolate ice cream, and the interestingly-placed banana,_ Willow thought absently. Not to mention the maraschino cherries. But unless they'd run out of cups and had started serving their sundaes on rounded, pale hills of flesh that she'd last seen standing in the middle of the bathroom last night, this wasn't anything you could buy along with your Peanut Buster Parfait. Though it might increase sales if they made the offer.

"No, it's..uh... it's Spike. Naked. A la mode." Or technically, Spike's ass, a la mode, since the ice cream was mostly centered there. The slope of his back was visible above it, though, and the silver-white blur of hair that identified the subject of the picture better than any label that hadn't been filled in next to the date-stamp at the bottom of the photo. She almost laughed, before her brain went somewhere else entirely.

"Huh?" Tara bent closer, then stood up rapidly. "Oh. Um. Oh." Willow was still staring at the image. "Willow?"

"What? I didn't do it. I mean, I didn't take it. I mean, I saw him naked, but it wasn't this time, it was last night." Yes, that made perfect sense. It also did much to remove the 'Oh dear, maybe I'll have to commit her after all' look from Tara's face.

"That's...um... you saw him naked last night?"

"Shower. Walked in. Thought it was Xander. Not that I was walking in on Xander, I just wanted to talk to him and thought he was behind the curtain and he wasn't, he was in the middle of the room and he wasn't Xander, he was Spike, and did you know he has a Tigger tattoo on his ass?" _And way to counter that stereotype everyone has of you that you babble at the slightest opportunity,_ her inner Cordelia (the High-School Version, TM) added.

"Oh. I...um... don't see one in that picture." Tara was blushing very attractively, a strange, detached part of Willow's brain noticed, before her eyes automatically returned to the polaroid.

Willow blinked, and looked down at the picture yet again, noting that Tara was right -- though _she_ couldn't know where Spike's tattoo was, Willow did, and that spot was devoid of both ice cream and Tigger. She sighed, finally admitting to herself that she was staring at the picture simply because it was, if utterly weird, also extremely sexy. Fine. Spike had a nice ass. Even Tara seemed to be somewhat transfixed by it.

So why --aside from her innate sense of decency -- did Willow's gaze keep slipping down the ice cream sundae to the legs that stretched out beneath it, slim muscular thighs giving way to firm calves, strong ankles, and -- _Nononononono. Can't be. Uh-uh. No. No way._ Willow stared at the feet that were showing at the very edge of the photo area, just above the white border and the date-stamp, as if whoever had taken it only had room to back up far enough away to get Spike's whole body in the shot, if he cut off the toes.

He. If _he_... _Oh, come on. Come on, Willow. Come on, Willow. You know those sheets, you know that blanket, you know that beat up plaid mattress peeking out from under the blue tarp thing that you --thank god-- didn't know Xander keeps in his room, and will now have to spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself you haven't seen. You know that tiny little cramped basement where there isn't room to take a decent picture even if there were enough light..._ Yes, she knew. But... _You know damned well that if you stand up and take those boots off his feet and look inside, they'll say nine-and-a-half. Not that you need to know that, since it's Xander's bed, and Xander's pillows, and not Xander's feet, just like it wasn't Xander's foot the last time._

Not to mention that the date stamp was 6/29/00. This Thursday. Three days ago.

_But..._ her mind continued to hammer at her. But Spike lives with him. He could've been using the bed when Xander wasn't home. _But Xander was home. Who do you think took the picture? And you know he was home when you saw fishbelly-white-foot-guy in person, just before Xander chased you out the door with a panful of chocolate crispy treats and much babbling on both parts._ You know, a little voice whispered in her mind. You knew when you saw him last night, and you put it away, because you were too busy staring at his ass, not to mention other naughty bits, to notice the little things. Little things like the fact that you saw a vampire sleeping in your best friend's bed.

As she handed the sundae picture to Tara without looking her in the eye -- anything not to have to open her mouth and say something -- Willow was almost afraid to look at the next one. Sundae being eaten? A bubble of laughter rose in her throat, but she choked it down, and flipped over the photo.

Polaroid. Date-stamp in the same place, but this one read 6/30/00. Same half-lit basement room, same bed. No tarp. Just Xander. In close-up. Looking at the camera. Willow closed her eyes. Breathed. Opened them again.

It wasn't that he was naked. He was, but there wasn't anything in this picture that you couldn't show on primetime TV. Nothing to make even the Willow who had drooled over him in high school go eep. Just a bare, tan shoulder, the length of an unclothed back fading into the dark background. Maybe the suggestion of the curve of a hip, but nothing you could prove in court. It wasn't that he was naked.

It was the look on his face. Chin propped on crossed arms. Tangled brown curls falling on his forehead, wide smile bared to the world. Un-self-conscious, maybe a little amused, but mostly just... happy. Like she'd been seeing little glimpses of all weekend, between the appearances of Xander's usual jester's mask and the scared little boy who peeped out from behind it.

In this picture, Xander didn't look like any kind of little boy -- he looked like a man. A man whose brown eyes stared steadily into the camera in a way that made Willow close her own eyes again.

She wondered if the man lying next to her, who wore size nine-and-a-half, or whatever the British equivalent was, Doc Martens, saw what she saw in that picture. She wondered how she'd manage to adapt the standard beat-you-to-death-with-a-shovel-if-you-hurt-him speech, to deal with a guy who was already dead. When he woke up. Assuming he woke up. She wondered if Xander was certifiably crazy, or if she was, and she was making the whole foot-size thing up in her head.

Willow opened her eyes and looked at the picture again, closely. Brought it to her face while Tara stood in front of her, still studying the sundae picture as if Spike's ass was the beginning and end of all that was weird in the world. It wasn't. Reflected in each of Xander's eyes, in the picture Willow held, was a tiny polaroid camera, floating in mid-air. Held by no-one. Held by Spike.

She laughed. She had to laugh. What else could she do but laugh? Xander the weirdness magnet. Xander the demon magnet. Xander the boy she'd been in love with back when she thought love was like those black and white pictures of a little boy in Dad's fedora, handing a red-tinted rose to a little girl in high heels and a floppy hat.

She glanced at Xander's crumpled fedora, still lying on the floor where Spike had stepped on it in the dark. The little things. Willow laughed again, and she couldn't stop, and she couldn't explain why, when Tara sat down next to her and put an arm around her, and said things would be all right. She wanted to explain, but she couldn't. She'd made a promise, after all. But that last little knot of tension, that Tara's fingers couldn't quite reach, faded away as Willow laughed.

A few minutes later, after she'd managed to start breathing normally again, and convinced Tara she was over her fit of hysteria, and slipped the stack of photos into her own pocket with the last one still unexamined, she punched-in Giles' number on the cell-phone. Still no answer. She'd touched the icky dead guy for nothing, the third-grade part of her mind informed her. Willow thought about laughing, but decided against it.

 


	5. Twilight Zone

Not too long ago, as reckoned by a vampire -- even one who can't decide exactly how old he is on any given night, depending on how cheesed off he is with his Sire -- Spike fell. Hard and fast and all those other romance novel cliches, for a sniping, infuriating, holier-than-thou loser whom he'd once detested -- and should still, if Spike were any kind of a decent evil bastard. That descent into madness, though, had ended in a roll on the basement floor and a mind-blowing fuck, and had left him with the unexpected gift of a warm, corruptible boy who licked chocolate peanut butter off Spike's face and snored in his ear.

Now, he was falling for Xander again. On the whole, if Spike could have concentrated enough to remember it, he would've preferred the first experience. This time, there wasn't any chocolate.

He plummeted, arms flailing, scrabbling for purchase on wet gray nothing that slid cold through his fingers, misted on his skin. Nothing to touch, nothing to see -- just endless twilight and wobbling imaginary shapes behind his eyes, that disappeared when he tried to focus on them. He could have been falling for seconds, or hours, or years, with nothing to pass the time there in the fog. He called something -- a name? His own or another? Or was it something else -- a question? Who, what, when, where, why... Even himself. They all flew from his lips. Gone. Sucked into the void.

He did remember...something. There had been fire. Fire and light and screaming, he remembered. He'd known that feeling, that pain that had screeched in his skull, but a thousand voices had shouted back at it. _Not fair! Didn't do anything! Didn't hurt anyone! Just wanted to touch!_ Laughter, high and musical, familiar as the pain, though older -- then silence. No real answer, not that he'd expected one, but the electric torture had finally faded out, to be replaced by something even worse: nothing at all.

The emptiness, the silence, drowned out everything, even his own familiar mental gadflies. Couldn't hear himself think, couldn't think to wonder why. It terrified him, because it meant the smart-arsed little voices that lived in his mind had nothing to say to him, or they were gone entirely-- burned out of existence. Alone even inside himself... Jagged bolts of panic up and down his spine as he continued to fall. He almost welcomed the fear, because it gave him something to concentrate on.

Without warning, that fear was gone. No room for it in the space of _shit!_ and whoosh and shudder as he hit bottom. Couldn't see, could barely feel, but he just knew he was spread out all over the ground -- smashed flat as a vampire pancake, and gooey with it, blood like chocolate syrup running out and away.

But he wasn't, he realized after a moment. Not pancake-smashed. Not smashed at all, except maybe cider-smashed, fourteen sheets to the wind as he scrambled to his feet and swayed. Saw nothing beyond the sudden swirling colors in front of his eyes, heard nothing beyond the ringing in his ears and the silence in his head, but he was still alive. Undead. Whatever. He would have kissed the ground if he had a clue where his lips were.

*****

Slap and splash of feet on wet pavement, and what a surprise-- Xander's running.

Damn, but he's good at this -- something to be proud of, yeah? Kept his ass alive on more than one occasion. Maybe even saved Buffy's, Willow's, when he's run to someone else for help, or for weapons, or to spread the word: "Badness on its way," so they could all deal with it together. He's not an athlete, could never be, can't pace himself, just runs until he falls -- but it's meant something in his life. More than just yeah, Harris is a pussy, like we didn't already know.

Not here, though.

This is the nightmare-place, which he dimly knows, and he's never saved anyone here, not even himself. This place is feet on road and heart in mouth, with the taste of stale vomit at the back of his throat. This is thinking he should stop and laugh, soon, at Miss Scary Thing 2000 and her dead-fish smile and her 'I think you'd better run now,' like she's the be-all-end-all compared to some of the shit that's chased him in the past. Yeah. He'll do that. 'Cause it's funny, right? He'll stop and laugh. Maybe a little later, like after he's dead. Then he'll have plenty of time.

This time could be different, though. He might get away, no matter that he never has before, on this road. He might find a place to hide. He's big now. He's a grown up. He's a man. No little pj-wearing boy-legs here-- they're long and strong, scattered with dark hair. And he really is good at this; he knows running, knows his feet and hands, knows lungs and stretch and sweat and how long he can go without doubling over and clutching his stomach and gagging on his own breath. Knows everything, so well that he can run with his eyes closed, lost in this rhythm of fear and flight.

Flee or fight? It's never been a question, not in this place -- but this time he might just be fast enough. He might win.

He knows he's lying, but he runs anyway, head down, wet hair flopping in his face. He doesn't need to see what's up ahead -- there's never anything new.

*****

Just when balance had returned to Spike, when he'd begun to sense rock beneath his feet, rain pattering on his skin, sentences beginning to form in his mind complete with subjects and predicates, it happened. Wham! Something slammed into him, hard, and he was swaying again.

It wasn't that falling, screaming terror of being alone, come back to get reacquainted -- this was real. Real as the ground, real as blood in his mouth, real as the echo of pain in his head. Something touched him, flesh to his flesh, and in that instant, everything changed.

Everything. Changed.

Everything... changes.

Warmth against him, behind him. Body. Muscle. Bones. Skin. Not alone, and there's a faint cheer from within his skull. Not alone inside, then, either. The other, the not-Spike, presses against him, hands scrabbling at his shoulders. Scratchy chin against the side of his neck. Wide chest at his back. Stomach, hips, thighs, hot and hard down the length of his body.

Hardness of more than muscle -- stiff, insistent cock slides in the rain-slick cleft of his naked buttocks.

Naked. He's naked. Like Adam with the fruit in his mouth, he knows it for the first time, and calls it good, echoing a first-father long cursed into memory. Naked. God. Skin against skin. Wet skin against his back, his arse, ticklish backs of his knees, and _God, are you there, did you give this to me? This warm body against me, this breath on my neck?_ Warmer than anything in the cold rain. Sweet, familiar, strange and sharp. _Is he mine?_

Rapture. Someone once told him, years past believing, about the Rapture, and he had laughed, and scraped her mouth with his fangs, and said it was over, long over, and they were all that was left on the earth. She'd believed him, had whispered a bloody novena into his kiss, but he knew nothing, then. This. This is it, this warmth, this man, _this_ the holy terror, and he could stand here forever, leaning back into this touch.

But there's no forever, there's only now. Panic -- sudden, fast, furious. Screaming fear and shame and cold air on his neck where there was warm, and none of it belongs to Spike. Sparks tzot-tzot the length of his spine again, goosebumps knobble his skin -- all from the outside. The other. He can feeltastesmell it pouring from whoever is pressed against him, naked skin shivering, shaking, building until he wants to scream, until he thinks that body will knock him over just to get him out of the way.

Instead, the world explodes. Or perhaps the world stays still, and he explodes. Flies apart, pieces of him shooting off like shrapnel -- then pulled back together. Sucked whole and solid into one quivering, thrumming body, no sign of the other one to be found. Lost in the dark? Pushed on past him? Gone, yet not, his skin still warm from the presence, and then...

He's running. Abrupt and awkward from a standing start, but fast as he can, fast as that body had been moving when it slammed into him. Running blind with something hard beneath his feet and big, cold raindrops splatting on his head and the scuff in his ears of soft-soled shoes on asphalt. No time to question why he's suddenly clothed; only time for running, mindless as a hunted fox.

Footfalls ring out behind him, louder than his own. Loud as thunder, loud as breaking bones or bootheels on stone, and it just now occurs to him _why_ the one who hit him had run so fast.

_It's coming..._

Words and thought and the knowledge of his own name _Spike, my name is Spike, once it was Will, but not now..._ return with the realization, but so does fear, and this time it's his own. Bad. Wrong. Worse than anything. Worse than a cold bed. Worse than falling. Worse than silence in his head. That silence is gone, anyway. A single mind-voice chants its counterpoint to the footfalls in the distance -- an endless litany of bugger and fuck and bloody sodding hell, gotta run, it's gonna touch me. If it touches me...

Spike runs, and behind him, something laughs. He almost thinks he knows it.

*****

BANG! Bang-thud-a-bang.

Tara sat up with a start, her heart thudding almost as loudly as the sound she'd heard. She realized with a flare of guilt that she'd fallen asleep, sitting in a chair by the sliding doors, watching the rain. _Maybe it was thunder?_ Willow was still clacking away at the keyboard, so maybe she hadn't heard anything after all.

After Willow's weird little laughing jag, she'd returned to the computer with a vengeance. All of her nervous energy had faded away, leaving behind it a calm, focused drive to search for answers. The photos she'd found in Spike's jacket had disappeared into Willow's pocket with not another word spoken about them.

_She has to have figured it out,_ Tara had thought, but she hadn't dared to break Willow's good mood by asking -- and it scarcely mattered, at the moment. Instead, she'd tried to help with the research -- but a few moments of watching those fingers fly over the keys was all it took for Tara to realize Willow was in her own groove. She'd called Wesley a few times on the cell-phone, early on, and asked Tara to run though the list of dream-related spells she knew, but after that, it was back to typing and clicking. Willow didn't need anybody hovering over her shoulder, no matter how politely she insisted that Tara _wasn't_ a distraction, so Tara had taken a seat by the window, to wait.

The sky on the other side of the water-streaked glass had been gray as the thing that surrounded Xander, though far less disturbing. The rain had glowed a misty silver with the city lights behind it, and she'd thought absently how different it was from home. There, twilight would have been long gone, the house far enough from town that the dark just swallowed it up when the sun went down. The patter of the raindrops was the same, though, that old lullaby against her bedroom window, soft and low. Eventually her eyelids must have drooped as she watched and listened, as they were drooping again now.

Thud-bang-thud-thud-thud!

Tara blinked, and saw Willow jump in her seat. She hadn't imagined it -- somebody had knocked on the door, and now they were pounding. Willow must have been so into her rhythm that she hadn't heard it at all, the first time.

"I'll get it." As if she could make up for her dereliction of doing-nothing-helpful duty, Tara rose to her feet and hurried over to open the door.

In front of her stood two dripping-wet people and one dry one, with a folded umbrella over his wrist and a stack of books in his arms.

"What took you guys so long?" Cordelia pushed past Wesley, then Tara, without waiting for an answer, and walked directly over to Xander's bed, peering over the rolled wooden footboard at him.

"I was just gonna ask you that," Willow responded, standing up and stretching. "It's been forty-five minutes since I talked to you last. I was about to call again just to make sure you hadn't run off the road."

"Sorry," Wesley held up the pile of books as he walked in. "We had to stop at my place, as well as Cordelia's." Willow was across the room to take them from him in seconds. Tara ducked out of her way and into the bathroom to raid the towel rack. Wesley was still apologizing as she came out. "The traffic was horrendous, as well. People in Los Angeles drive like idiots, in the rain. It's a wonder more of them don't get killed on the freeway than in the alleyways."

"Especially when they let _some_ people drive who have no concept of what the phrase 'Angel, for God's sake, pick a lane' means," Cordelia said, turning around to face them. Her tone was light, but her face was pale beneath the California tan, her eyes clouded. She accepted a towel from Tara with a distracted, "Thanks," and carefully wrung out her long hair into it. Then she flicked the wet ends in Angel's direction. "I mean, just because _you_ could walk away from an intimate encounter with a Mack truck doesn't mean the rest of us wouldn't suffer from severe tire damage."

"He was...er...passing, Cordelia," Wesley said. He gave a worried look in Angel's direction, as if he didn't quite believe his own explanation.

"Uh-huh. That usually involves signaling. Or so the DMV guy said, the first three times I took the test. Ooh, for me too? Thanks again." Cordelia grabbed the second towel from Tara's hands, the one she'd meant for Angel, and wrapped her hair up in it. Then she moved to the chair where Tara had been sitting, and flopped down into it. "This...sucks. Why couldn't the Powers-That-Can't-Just-Send-An-E-Mail have bopped me with a vision? Preferably _before_ Xander decided to sleep with the enemy? I wouldn't even have bitched about the headache, this time."

She was staring beseechingly at Angel, as if she thought he knew the answer, but Angel said nothing. He just stood there, water dripping from his leather jacket and the wilting brown spikes of his hair. Wesley had already bent over Willow's computer, studying the screen with great interest, but Angel stood silent in the middle of the room. Tara started to offer him a towel as well, but he shook his head. Not really at her, she realized a second later, but like he was just waking up. He walked over to Spike's bed, and gazed at the still, pale form with an intensity that she could feel, though she couldn't begin to guess what he was thinking.

Then a hand on Spike's arm, and she could have told Angel it wouldn't work. Neither would shaking Spike, or yelling his name, or shifting his own face into demon-mode, as liquid as the rain outside, and growling at him -- though Angel tried them all in the next few minutes. Everyone in the room turned to watch, when they heard the half-animal growl.

No reaction. No movement. The same as it had been for an hour and a half, now. Until Xander kicked at his covers again, and Spike's still-booted foot jerked in perfect synchrony. Angel started, bending closer to look at Spike's face, then over at Xander. It wasn't illumined in a flash of lightning, or anything so dramatic, but as Tara looked at the gold eyes, half hidden under the folds of his vampiric brow, she knew. _He_ knew.

Then Angel straightened to his full height and turned fully around to face them, and something like lightning did spark in those yellow irises. Tara decided she definitely didn't want to be around if he ever did turn evil again. But the strange planes and furrows melted away, and his face looked more human than any of them, for a second. Confused, like he hadn't really believed anything Willow had told them on the phone, until he'd seen it himself, and now...

It was gone as quick as it came-- but there was that spark, again, in brown human eyes. He was suddenly all business, glancing back and forth between Willow and Wesley, who stood there with books in their hands, now.

"Are they in danger?"

"They might be," Wesley answered with a nod. "We can't be sure."

Angel nodded. "What do we do?"

"We...um..." Willow looked at Wesley, who nodded -- then she took a deep breath and looked back to Angel. "We wait."

*****

Spike's running.

It's not the running that's the problem. He's chased down hundreds of victims foolish enough to think they had a chance, that they could hide from something that sees in the dark -- that they could travel faster than the dead, and yes, the dead do travel fast, Mr. Stoker. They've been wrong, and he's been happy to prove them so. He's even chased Dru, games of tag in the forest or the jungle or down a windy London street, her laughter floating back to him mixed with snatches of nursery rhymes. 'Run, run, as fast as you can, can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man...'

But this is different, because he's running _from_ something-- only he doesn't know what. Just that if he slows down, it'll get him. If he looks back, it'll get him.

It's not right; William the Bloody doesn't run from anything, except demons at least five feet taller or three feet wider than him, or have more teeth than he can count in a single glance, or... He's got a list of rules, somewhere. Unwritten, like his lengthy essay on how to bollocks-up conquering the world in two easy steps, or his treatise on why a real man would never bleach his hair with anything that doesn't burn your nose hairs off when you sniff it. But the rules exist all the same, and nowhere do they say 'Run like your head's on fire and your arse is catching, from something you haven't even seen.'

So why can't he stop? He's back to himself; he knows his name and his current hair color and the fact that he once tried to justify using 'blancmange' as a rhyme for orange, when he was quite, quite drunk and writing limericks on a wall in Marseilles. The panic's still there, still burning his throat, but he can swallow it enough to think, so-- Why. Can't. He. Fucking. Stop.

Why are his legs pumping, feet splashing in puddles on the road, as he runs towards something in the distance, just slightly brighter than the gloom that surrounds him? He can finally hear, finally see, not that there 's bugger-all to hear or see but road and dark and that light in the distance.

It's not exactly safety, but it's something. It draws him, and he runs faster-- though not on purpose. His body just moves more quickly, jerking him along with it. Heart pounding, blood rushing through his veins, pulse echoing in his temples. Breath in short gasps, as if his lungs are conditioned to running _from_ things, and...

Bloody hell. Lungs. He's breathing.

Spike's breathing. There's air. There's blood. Inside him. Pumping, not sitting still and doing its little magic vampire I'm-not-gonna-tell-you-how-I-keep-you-walking-and-talking thing. He'd stop still and stare at himself, if he could. But he can't make his legs stop moving, mouth stop holding that panic taste of copper and battery acid. He runs on towards the brightening light, because he can't _stop_ running.

He can listen, though, to the alien beat of a pulse in his ears. Something he hasn't felt since he looked into Dru's round, mad eyes a hundred and twenty years ago in London, and saw them turn gold as she darted for his neck. He can feel that same pulse in his throat now, feel his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of his footfalls on the road.

Something's wrong with this. This isn't him. He's a vampire, and vampires don't breathe -- he's pretty sure it was in the manual. How? He can't concentrate on how. He can fight the streaks of pure fear that try to tell his mind not to think, to just run blind like his body, and he can conquer those, but it takes all he's got. No energy left for how.

The lights ahead glow brighter, and he can see outlines of a city, in the distance.

Nah, not really a city. Not like L.A. Not like London, not even the London of his youth. Just a town with delusions of grandeur. One main drag and a bunch of suburban neighborhoods clustered around the center, as if being close to the brightest lights can protect them from what walks down those streets at night-- or runs down them. The university off in the distance, and beyond it, the vineyards and the sea.

He can't see any of that, but he doesn't have to. He knows it. It's the shape in his head of the lights, the buildings. The battered and beaten metal sign looming out of the road ahead of him, that should have Rod bloody Serling standing behind it, telling him which way to turn, but instead it says 'Welcome to Sunnydale. ' Too bad he can't stop to run it over. Kick it down. Something. It's tradition.

Spike laughs as he runs past it, into the city, into the rain-misted lights and down empty, lonely Main Street. Laughs inside, since his body won't let him laugh for real. Laughs at the sign, laughs at himself. William the Formerly Bloody lives -- resides, rather -- in a town with a Main Street. In someone else's basement, with a warm human lover who no more belongs to Spike than the bed they sleep in or the cable they pirate.

He knows this much, just as he knows he shouldn't be here now, passing the Sun Cinema, dark and shuttered, the marquee as blank as his memory of where he _should_ be, or how he got here. Spike laughs again, in his head, but it sounds hollow, and echoes too loudly in his skull. Or are the voices in his head laughing back at him? He feels his body shiver as he moves through the heart of town, the rain pouring down on him. Can still feel the terrifying pounding in his chest, his instincts telling him to wise up and ignore it, as if this stubborn body will let him. Need to look around -- check all the shadows.

Mustn't get complacent. Not safe just because it's familiar. How long ago did he learn that, at familiar hands? Familial hands. Not a human to be seen on the streets, like for once they all know something nasty's out and about. Much nastier than a pathetic crippled vampire who can't bite up anything worse than cartoon cereal. No hunting, no stalking, no riling up the townsfolk anymore, not for Spike -- and not smart enough to even lock himself in the basement and cower, like they're doing. No, he's out playing lamb to the slaughter, for something he can't even turn around to identify.

_Wait! There! Someplace safe!_ his body screams at him. Run, thwap, rubber soles on asphalt, then on concrete, as he jogs up the sidewalk. Takes the front steps of the ruined Sunnydale High building two at a time, crosses the courtyard and he's standing, stopped, finally stopped, at the skewed front doors.

Safety? This is supposed to be safety? Running _towards_ the Hellmouth? _Body, what the hell are you thinking?_ Giggles in his mind, from the snarky little voices, and Spike thanks whatever gods look after insane demons that they haven't disappeared after all.

Still, he can't let them _know_ he's actually glad to hear from them. _Mind, what the hell are you thinkin'? We are vampire. We don't giggle. Especially hysterically._ One of them snaps at him. _We don't breathe, either, you thick-headed git._ But he can't quite wrap his mind around what it's trying to tell him, or which one it is. Still-- whatever the thing that's chasing him is, it's out _there_, and it's not inside, which is reason enough to go in, as if he has a choice in the matter, when his body's already yanking on the doorhandles, and tumbling into chaos.

The doors slam shut behind him, and it's nothing like he expected. Brightly-lit hallway. Surrounded by laughter and shouts, swallowed up in a crowd of pushing, jostling bodies, moving along with them. Touch of warm shoulders and arms. Squeak of locker doors. Smell of students and teachers and chalk dust and teen spirit. Wrong, wrong, wrong, like all this has been wrong...

Not right-- these halls should be dark, burnt-out, should smell like fear and cordite and fried snake, which smells vaguely like chicken. Spike remembers this place -- dark and silent and the world was ending, and the sky had fallen on him, and somebody pulled him out from under it.

Now it's like that world's been turned on its head, and he's walking on that darkened sky, the earth above it bright and loud and teeming with life. The student-body is an animal unto itself, writhing its way through the halls, sweeping Spike along with it. An electric bell rings, somewhere in the ceiling.

"Hurry, we'll be late!" comes a young girl's voice from somewhere in the melee. It's familiar. Willow? He tries to shout for her, shout 'Red?' but nothing comes from his lips.

The crowd-snake thins out as it undulates further down the corridor, until it's only his own uncontrollable body that's pulling Spike along. There, at the junction of the next hall, a classroom door. Slightly ajar, and he hears the girl's voice raised in laughter, within. His body moves toward it, and the fear-shivers calm, just a bit.

Before he can get there, though, a flash of silver. Dark blur out of the corner of his eye, and Spike's feet stop moving. If he could control himself, he'd be frozen by what he thinks he saw, but can't have -- as it is, his head turns towards the wall of its own accord.

To see the hallway and its contents reflected in the scratched-up depths of a full-length mirror.

Reflected. He stares at it, transfixed by the image before him. It blinks when his eyes decide to close and open. Runs a hand through sweaty rain-drenched hair as he feels his own hand making the same motion. Straightens his button-up shirt. But it isn't him.

Dark eyes, big enough to suck him into the mirror, muddled with uncertainty. Dark hair, long and falling in his face, water dripping down his skin. Blue and green print shirt, the collar open a few buttons down to show the tanned throat beneath. Stubborn chin above it, and thin lips twitch nervously, though they look full enough when he pouts or frowns or sucks on his own finger-- or someone else's cock. Not that he's doing any of those things, but Spike has seen them all before.

Just never echoing Spike's own motions in a silvered surface that he's never expected to get any use out of, ever again. But then, it _isn't_ him.

Spike studies himself in the mirror. Not himself. Xander. Xander in the mirror.

Not even the Xander he knows, not quite. Something wrong with the body before him; tall enough, but too slender. The hair too long in the wrong places, the paisley print shirt an older sort of loud than the tropical ones the boy wears now. The brown reflected eyes are soft and huge, like somebody's just let him know Bambi's mum doesn't make it to the end of the flick. And there's something else...

There, on his forehead, where the sweat-damp hair is sticking. Something written there, stamped red on his skin. It tickles Spike's memory even as his hand -- Xander's hand? -- reaches up to rub at the letters.

V-I-C-T-I-M ...

Xander in the mirror frowns back at him, when his scrubbing motions do nothing but make them stand out more. Red letters against pale skin, still wet from the rain, or from the sweat dripping down from his long bangs. "I'm not..." Spike hears, as Xander tries to comb that fringe of hair down to hide the marks. The lips in the mirror move. Spike's lips move -- but the voice is Xander's. It cracks on the last word.

_What is this? Which of us am I? Is this the Red King's dream, or mine?_ And all of a sudden, as a soft nineteenth-century voice starts misquoting Alice at him, he knows. This isn't real, though it's real as anything, at the same time. The working lungs, the beating heart, the uncontrollable limbs -- it makes a lunatic sense. It's a nightmare. He's dreaming he's sharing Xander's body, like the hero of too many bad B-grade sci-fi movies -- or one of old Rod's little half-hour monochrome mind-fucks. He's trapped inside his lover, who can't even hear him trying to shout. Be a good flick, if he were curled up with Xander watching it, bowl of M&amp;M's on the armrest between them -- but he's not.

If he's dreaming, he should be able to wake up, yeah? He tries. Thinks really hard at the mirror. _My name is Spike. I'm dead, but still kicking. My hair's peroxide-blond, I've got cheekbones to die for, and I'd sell my left tit for a good hot fudge sundae. I'm dreaming, and I want to wake up._

Nothing, except Xander looking back at him, young and scared and far too edible. Hot fudge indeed. _Needs to find a vampire to protect him. Be the only one to eat him up._ He can't tell what part of him is thinking it. Which voice. The demon, the man, the peanut gallery. _Such a little boy, in this big scary world._

"I'm not," Xander's voice says again with Spike's throat, with Spike's tongue, and Spike thinks, _Not what? Edible? Oh, yes, believe me, you are._ But Xander shakes his head, brushing his brow with his fingers, frowning.

"You should leave the narcissism to those who possess something worth studying in a mirror, Mr. Harris. Don't you have a class to get to?"

A little dash of panic again, because the body knows this voice. Spike finds himself spinning around to face...a bald head bobbing a few inches under his nose. It's a troll, he thinks at first. Not like Heimarr, the towering Norse buffoon he met in that bar in Copenhagen -- but an honest to god Three Billy Goats Gruff troll, the tiny sort that hides under bridges and snaps you up, snip snap snuff, with its sharp little teeth. A troll in a suit.

"Don't you have a tombstone you're supposed to be rotting under, Snyder?" he hears, feels Xander say, defensively brave.

_Snyder... I know that name... Snyder..._ Xander's voice in his memory: 'I should introduce you to Principal Snyder.' Night air rushing past them on the way to Giles's flat to play Quiz-Kids and eat pizza with the Scooby Gang, Spike concentrating on keeping his demon and its territorial rage in check, barely hearing his lover try to make conversation. 'No, wait, he's dead. But then, so are you. You could do lunch and discuss my dreary home-life...'

The little man snorts. "Somebody's gotta keep things in order around here. It's not as if _he_ could handle it."

He points down the hall. Another man, taller, stout, stands next to a row of lockers, playing with a strange yellowish dog-creature that jumps up energetically to lick his nose.

"He says it followed him to school. There are rules about that. Rules!"

The tall man pats the laughing dog-thing on the head; laughs along with it. "Down boy! That's a good doggie..."

It rips his head off. In one gulp. Spike's impressed. The blood fountains from the man's carotid artery, spattering the floor. Strangely, it doesn't make Spike hungry, in his dream of Xander's body, of what Xander would be thinking; he just finds it aesthetically pretty.

"See!" Snyder says. "That's what tolerance and understanding get you. It's no way to run a school. Now I'll have to get a custodian to come clean that up, and you can never find one when you need one..."

The laughing thing turns its face towards them, and Spike can see what it is. Not dog at all, but round-headed hyena, gold eyes flashing above a grinning, blood-drenched muzzle. 'I ate a pig once,' Xander confesses in Spike's memory. 'I was kind of possessed...' It laughs, in bubbling silver circles, faster and faster. He knows this laughter.

Spike blinks at the bulky, headless form that still stands somewhat forlornly in the hallway. Blinks again when Xander's voice says, "I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I never bit anybody's head off." He sounds like he's apologizing for something, all the same. The hyena still laughs.

The large man's body stumbles around for a bit, then drunkenly weaves its way down the hallway and out of sight, still trailing blood. The hyena turns around fully, apparently finished with that meal -- but it's licking its lips. Looking hungrily at Spike and the strange, short man, who gives a knowing look.

"You didn't do it, Harris?" He laughs, short, sharp, nothing like the crazy looping laughter of the hyena. "No, you weren't there, were you. Not your fault. Never your fault. You're just the whipping-boy."

"I'm not. You don't know me." Spike feels the surge of anger before it reaches Xander's voice. "You don't have any idea what I am."

"Don't I?" Flash of an image in front of Spike's eyes, almost too fast to focus on -- the faded blue of Xander's light summer blanket. Not like his own memories -- more like what he'd felt at Woodstock, second-hand acid-trip coursing through his veins. Barrage of sound, feeling, smell, all packed up into a second's worth of experience. Scent of fabric softener. Cramp in crabbed hands clutching the blanket. Denim under his naked stomach and a hard bulge against his side, his own as hard and hot beneath him. Cool air over his bare arse and a rush and SMACK and he's back in the hallway staring at the sneering, balding stranger. "Whipping-boy."

"It's not the same." Spike's head shakes from side to side, but he can't tell from the voice if Xander believes what he's saying. If he, Spike, that is, believes what... Whatever. Personal pronouns make no sense, so he discards the need to worry about them.

Especially with worse things to worry about -- the hyena gives a strange snarl, as if it, too, is unsure, then the sound changes. Of all the noises in the world, Spike can recognize _that_ growl. The body is frozen, Xander's mouth uncharacteristically still.

_Run, dammit, boy. You're bloody good at it when you have to be, dragged me along just fine on the way here, so do it now!_ This animal isn't what's been chasing them -- Spike can tell that, though he still has no idea what it was -- but that doesn't make it any less deadly. And he _knows_ it's a dream, but... But if he can't wake up and it eats him-them-him, is he any less dead?

"Um... I think I have a class to get to..." Xander babbles abruptly, taking the body a step towards the classroom door. There's a sudden, bone-crushing grip on his/their upper arm.

"How fast do you think you can run, whipping-boy?" the little man asks. "Faster than that?" He points at the laughing animal, whose mouth opens to reveal rows and rows of sharp, white teeth. Too many. Spike's eyes, Xander's eyes, flick to the classroom door again.

"I don't have to run faster than that," Xander whispers.

Eyes close against his will, and Spike's trapped in darkness for a too-long moment, before the second rush of images comes. Running again. Running, running, through a cemetery, an arm heavy over his shoulder, someone's hand reaching around the body between them to clasp his free one as they all three run. Then... The weight gone, the hand in his, small, warm, still there, but nothing between them, and the sound of snarling in the night.

It's gone. His eyes open, and he swallows hard. "I don't have to run faster than the monster," Xander says. "I just have to run faster than you."

Snyder frowns, but his grip loosens, dissolves into mist. Spike's hand goes right through him as the body takes off running for the door at the end of the hall, the one with the frosted-glass window. The hyena's laughter echoes behind him, but he doesn't look back. He can't look back, because Xander chooses not to.

"Harris, you can't keep running forever!" Snyder calls after him over the chortling hyena, and something that sounds like the crunching of tiny troll-bones.

"Can too," Xander mutters as they slip in the back door to the classroom. "Can too, can too..."

The door shuts silently behind him, and the body crouches down. Walks, silly, like a duck, hiding below the level of the other students' heads. There are giggles. Someone hums "Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends."

It's insane. Insane to be trapped in some parody of Xander's body, that speaks to strange little Ferengi-like men in the hallway in Xander's voice, and runs from slavering hyenas with Xander's legs. Sneaks into Xander's classroom so the teacher won't catch them coming in late. Spike is already losing the clarity that he'd had moments ago. Forgetting that it's a dream. It's just him, in Xander's body, sharing this space. Trying to get to a seat, somewhere up ahead, without anyone grassing him out.

"Hey Harris -- walkin' kinda funny there. Rough night in the old basement? I think they sell a cream for that somewhere..."

His head whips around -- to shush the braying voice, hopefully -- but Spike feels his throat gulp at the sight of the large youth slumped lazily in the desk he's just passed. A sort of man-mountain-thing, with three cheerleaders draped over him, giggling and cooing. He's seen the kid before, somewhere. A photo. Pic of Xander and Jonathan the supertwerp, and this one, all decked out with weapons for the graduation party. But...

Spike and languages -- spoken, whispered -- gestured. Body language. Always good to know what's likely to get you beat senseless if you chat up the wrong sort of twelve foot demon because your bird fancies a threesome. A little faerie that whispers in your ear, Dru says. Gaydar, the humans call it. Spike thinks it's funny, since half the ones who say they have it couldn't tell if their own mother was bent or not.

This one makes Spike's little shoulder-faerie sing the Hallelujah Chorus. So why as many birds hanging off him as a hyena has fleas?

The hulking football player winks and leans down to look Spike in the eye. "Gotta maintain the image, bud. Got another two years before _I_ get to come out." Then he sits back up and whispers something in one cheerleader's ear. Tinkerbell hand-waving motions in Spike/Xander's direction. She titters appreciatively.

"Don't listen to him," a familiar voice says softly. He looks up to see Tara, in a desk near the front of the room, motioning him up. "He's just here to confuse you."

Isn't everyone? Willow, sitting in front of her, is young -- far too young, hair down to her waist, parted in the middle. Tara shouldn't know her like that. _Spike_ shouldn't know her like that, except for rifled photos in Xander's shoeboxes. The room is full of students, some Spike recognizes -- at least one he's positive he ate on parent-teacher night. They're chattering, tittering. They all seem to be laughing at him. The body moves on, though, stealth-crawling up the aisle towards her.

Tara's brushing Willow's hair, Long strokes, from the top of her head to the tip of the burnt auburn length. She motions him to sit across from her, and the body -- Xander -- complies. The seat ahead of Willow is empty, but a large piece of notebook paper has the word "SAVED" scrawled across it, and lies on the desk.

In front of Spike, of course, is the Slayer. She turns around and waves.

Willow chatters excitedly to Tara, occasionally glancing at him. " ... I threw holy water at one of them. And it worked, even though I'm Jewish-- I wonder what that's about? And then Buffy threw this cymbal at this one who had Xander and crash-bang! Poof! Slayer one, vampire none! You should've been there. Well, not really, cause, y'know, terrifying, but still..."

Spike feels himself tap Willow on the elbow. "Hey, Wills, I thought Library Guy was all about us _not_ telling people Buffy's the Slayer." Xander's voice in his mouth. Still strange, and suddenly strange again, to be speaking to Red with it. As strange as Xander's name once felt on his tongue, back when it was all 'droopy boy' and 'donut lad.' Spike feels, hears it again: "Oops. Guess maybe I said that a little too loud myself, there."

She looks over at him and smiles. "No, it's okay. This is Tara. She's my girlfriend. She knows all about this stuff. Tara, this is Xander."

His eyes blink. His mouth speaks. "Your _girlfriend_ ? But...um... what about me? I mean, what about Oz?"

Willow shakes her head at him, still smiling. "Oh, I've decided to give up on men -- they're too hairy. But boys are fine -- I'm gonna concentrate all my efforts on being a mom. Tara's gonna help me -- we've got a kitten together, and everything. We're getting married next week, and then we're gonna adopt you."

"Excuse me?" Spike feels himself frown. "I'm not a boy." Willow looks at him gently. "I'm _not_! Anyway, how are you gonna study for your PSAT's, if you adopt me and have to spend all your time ironing my clothes so they don't get all wrinkly from being out in the rain?"

"No problem. Tara knows this great spell. Works even better than irony. I mean ironing." Willow tilts her head and looks at his face. "See, he needs a mom, Tara. He's got something all over his forehead." She reaches into her knapsack and pulls out a tissue. Spits on it, and rubs it across Spike's brow. Xander squirms.

"It won't come off -- I tried."

"No, it's all gone, really, Xander," Buffy chirrups. Her nose wrinkles, then twitches, then starts to grow longer. Just a little bit. Almost enough to make it a real nose.

Xander's hand rubs Spike's forehead. "You don't have to lie to me, Buff. I know it's still there."

"Xander, it's _gone_ \-- honestly." Willow calls across the room, and Spike's eyes follow, so he can see someone he hadn't, before. Harmony, sitting in a desk by the window, putting on lipstick. The shades are pulled down, the whole length of the classroom, the only light coming from the overhead florescents. "Hey, Harmony, let me borrow that mirror, please."

"Excuse me? I think not -- you let your boyfriend be mean to me." Harmony snaps the compact shut, but holds it in her hand. Pouting. Spike knows that pout -- he's slapped it off her face a dozen times, and she's come back for more. But she's a child, now. Model's face rounded with baby fat.

"Hey, I dumped him, didn't I? And it's not like you need it anyway. You can't see yourself in it."

Harmony huffs and tosses that long blonde hair back over her shoulder. "I can pretend. I've gotta look good for my date tonight -- my boyfriend's taking me to France."

Spike has his doubts about that one. Willow does too, apparently. "On a school night?" She sounds older. Stronger. The Red he knows, though her face is still young and pale and nervous. "I bet you don't even _have_ a boyfriend. Just give me the mirror, already."

"I do too. He goes to another school. You wouldn't know him." Harmony grimaces, but tosses the compact at Willow, who opens it and shows Spike his reflection. Xander's reflection. Same bruised dark eyes. Same suspicious frown.

Nothing written on his forehead, though he saw the word as plain as day, in the mirror in the hall.

"See? Mom-spit gets everything off."

_You're not his mother. He has a mother. Though he might be better off with you, come to it._

She reaches into her purse and hands him a Hershey Bar. "Here -- eat this. Chocolate always makes you feel better."

Xander doesn't take the chocolate bar. "No. Um. No, thanks. Not always." Fingers rub at Spike's forehead. He can _feel_ the word, still there, still burning on his skin. What's it mean? Whose victim? Not Spike's.

"I'm _not_ ! Dammit, I'm _not!_ Why can't he see?" He can hear Xander's voice saying it, but his own lips don't move. His own throat doesn't buzz. The sound just hangs in the air.

Spike tries to frown, though the body is already doing so. Why couldn't _who_ see? _Blind as a bat, you are,_ his mind-voices taunt. _Wonder whatever happened to those spectacles you won't admit you ever wore?_

There's a cough from the front of the room, and Buffy tugs on his sleeve.

"Keep it _down_, Xander. You want big-ears to hear us from the library and make us go fight things? I just wanna be a kid, today." She's suddenly dressed in teen-sized Osh-Kosh B'Gosh overalls, fluffy hair in two pigtails. "I don't _like_ to kill things."

"Not like _some_ people..." Spike hears a voice say softly in his ear. Not Xander's, but familiar. So familiar. No one seems to hear it but him. Is he losing it, more than usual? His eyes flick left and right, as if his body has the same idea. "Paranoid. You _are_ crazy, Xander..." the voice whispers at him. "Just as crazy as Dru."

And what's wrong with that? Crazy's good, crazy's fine. Crazy's... _Wonderful, when you're not cradling him in your arms and hoping you've not lost him... Shut up. Shut up. Sod off._

"I'm not." Xander says again.

"You know, if you keep talking English, the teacher's gonna yell at you," Buffy tells him. Pokes him on the arm. "You have to speak French. Like me. Veuillez permettre aux poissons de continuer de danser. Je suis très attiré à lui."

Something about a fish? The teacher would rather they talked about waltzing fish? A glance from the Xander-body around Buffy at the person sitting up front. A smooth dark head of hair, bent over a book.

Then she looks up. "Oui, Buffy. Tres bon." Sparkling insect eyes, and waving antennae. Her head descends again.

Spike's Xander-head bends low, whispering. "She's not the French teacher. She's the biology teacher!"

"She's subbing. And her _name_ is French. Work with me, here." Buffy rolls her eyes, and turns to Willow. "So... do you think he'll be here? He's _always_ late." Only she says it in questionable French: "Le pensez-vous serez-vous ici? Il est toujours en retard."

"I don't know -- he had a big night on Friday, what with the staking and all. But I can't believe he wouldn't show up today. I mean, it's all anybody's talking about!"

"Who's _he_ ?" Xander asks with Spike's mouth. "And I am _not_ a retard."

Tara frowns. "What do you mean, who's he?"

Harmony laughs from her seat by the window. "Everybody knows who he is. What are you, new?"

"He's only the coolest guy in the school," Cordelia says. She sits across the aisle, on the other side of Willow, and snatches Harmony's mirror away. "Which would explain why you don't know him, of course." Two tiny red dots on her neck, and Xander blinks when Spike would have. Recognizing them for what they are, though neater than most would be. She accentuates them with a skinny lip pencil, until they're huge, though still perfectly round. "There -- now everybody can see the hickey he gave me on Friday."

"Oh, as if he's _even_ interested in you," Buffy tosses her ponytails. "He walked _me_ home on Friday night, after the Harvest."

Harvest. The word rings a strange tingling bell in Spike's head. Nothing he's ever associated with Sunnydale, specifically. Something old. Angelus, blathering on about his grandsire. Some half-crocked prophecy that had Darla running home to the Master for three years to help research, and in the end, slinking back to them. Tossing her hair the same way Buffy had just done, saying he was off his nut and she'd much rather travel to places with clean sheets and a decent skyline.

"But who _is_ he?" Xander's voice, Spike's mouth.

"You know him, Xander. We talk about him all the time. He's our best friend in the world. Besides you, of course," Tara says. "Don't you remember?"

"But I really don't..."

"Maybe you're crazy..." the whisper that no one hears. "Maybe you forgot him. Can't be that everybody else did. Has to be you."

Spike looks at the empty seat, because his head turns that way. 'SAVED.' For who? He'd never heard of any best friend of Xander's, besides Willow and the Slayer. _No accounting for taste there._

"Shh..." Willow says to Tara. "Xander's got...problems. We don't... Ohmigod, there he is!" She squeals and points to the front door of the classroom, just to the left of the bug-teacher's desk.

A tall shadow outside it. The body blinks. Spike can _feel_ his heartbeat get faster. "No," Xander whispers. "Dammit, you can't come here. Buffy's here."

Whatever it is, Spike's suddenly shaking in his seat. Something bad. Something he doesn't want to see. Something that makes him want to run, now, but he's petrified by Xander's immobility.

And there's a knock.

"Oui, je sais que vous êtes là." The teacher answers without looking up from her book. "You're late. Do you require an engraved invitation?"

"Well, kinda, yeah..." A young male voice, nothing special about it.

"No-- don't let him in!" Xander jumps up from his desk. Spike can feel the tension singing in his too-tall, not-quite-balanced-right body.

"Xander, what's wrong with you? He's your friend! You go bowling with him, remember? Xander?" Willow pulls at him, but Xander is standing. Backing away from the door. Looking at Buffy, who's grown smaller and smaller, until she _is_ a child, in her blue overalls.

"You can't let him in."

"En français, Xander."

"I don't know the French. But you _can't_ let him in!"

"But she doesn't have to." The whisperer is back. High and almost whining. Silver. Rainy, like the rain he can hear pounding on the shaded windows. "You'll let him in yourself. You always do."

"No," Xander whispers back. Spike's throat muscles clench. Teeth grind, then bite at his lips. "No." But it comes. Pouring forward from his mouth, like everything in him is being sucked out, in this one sound. Spike knows that feeling, knows the loss and the weakness and the letting go.

"Come..."

No.

"In."

The lights go out.

 


	6. Dark Places

It's dark. Pitch cold black dark. No sound of rain on glass, no graysilver twilight. Just dark. He's alone, as you can only be in the dark, no matter who's around you. No matter _what's_ around you. _Don't move -- it'll hear you. Don't breathe, don't... don't just stand there, dipshit. Gotta run. Gotta hide._

When they'd done nuclear attack drills in school-- and even the most stick-up-the-ass teachers couldn't hide a cynical eye-roll at this -- they'd been told to sit in their desks, and put their arms over their heads, just like for an earthquake. Don't look, because you might be staring at the explosion, and go blind. Forget that the school would go up in flames, that if they were close enough to be blinded by a modern nuke, they'd be ashes anyway. Just don't look. That'll save you.

He knew it was ridiculous even then, though now there's a faint echo of laughter in his head, from the professional grunt who told him where to place the charges for maximum effect when he blew the place up himself. Still, it's a foxhole, sort of. A way to pretend. He slips into a desk, quiet as he can, and hides, with his eyes closed and his arms over his ears. _I can't see you, I can't see you, I can't see you..._

*****

Spike used to be afraid of the dark. Once. Back when he was human and frail and small and all he had to fight off the bad things that lived in it were a worn stuffed lamb to clutch and the bedclothes pulled tight over his head.

He hasn't been afraid of the dark for a long time. Time came when he got too old for hiding under the covers, and if he still feared walking home alone at night... Well, he didn't have to say so, and later, he became one of those bad things, himself.

Still, Spike wouldn't curse a candle right about now, no matter that no mostly-sane vampire cares much for fire. Torch, flare, access to a light-switch; he's not picky. Spike waves his hands around him, feeling for a desk, a chair, a door. Anything. Anyone.

Nothing. No one.

"Xander?"

It comes out in his own voice. Unsure, rusty with being held inside another throat for...however long it's been, but his voice. Spike's voice. Spike's accent, Spike's word. His. Spike's mouth.

And everything changes again.

Spike was free. His hands belonged to him again -- he could move them around, not that he could see them, but he could feel the expected swoosh of air. He could hum, and laugh, and listen to the bitter echo in the darkness that stretched out around him.

Bitter, because he was free, and only in his freedom, did he realize he was alone. Xander hadn't answered. Xander, his bizarre dream of Xander's voice and hands and reflection, wasn't there.

His body felt the chill, with no blood to warm it. The silence was deeper, with no sound of breathing in his ears, no cracking tenor voice in his mouth, only his own. "God, I could use a smoke." He laughed again, at the sound. "Or a light. I'd settle for a light."

It glowed in front of him, orange in the black.

"And the morning and the evening were the first day..." Spike muttered as he walked towards it. _Deja-vu, cept it can't be Sunnydale, unless they've set the place on fire._ That thought warmed him a little. Couldn't tell how far away it was, except that it got bigger, after a while. Brighter. A pillar of flame, rising up, too bright to stare directly at for long, yet lending no light to its surroundings -- or there was just nothing else there for it to light up.

As he walked, he thought he heard things, familiar voices floating around in the darkness.

"Here. Drink this. And stop it." Sharp, female, his Sire's little cheerleader with the take-no-shit crossbow in his face.

"Stop what?"

"Brooding."

"I'm not..."

"Right, you're not brooding. You're sitting there -- on top of a bag of M&amp;M's, by the way, just thought I'd let you know, so you're not surprised when you stand up and have chocolate all over your ass -- thinking, 'God, he looks so helpless lying there, and it's all my fault, my kid and his buddy got attacked by a monster, and the world's gonna end and Gucci is gonna discontinue the padded loafer, all because I was smooching Wesley behind a potted plant, for lo, I am Angel, and I am responsible for all. But you're not brooding."

"Well, not the Gucci part." A crinkle of something, and faint, faint smell of chocolate. "Um, you... potted plant?"

"Boston fern. Drink your blood. I promise not to tell the Powers That Be that you were playing tongue-twister with Wes, if you promise to inform me before you do anything _really_ stupid, so I can at least call Willow and have her wait outside the door with the Ritual of Restoration handy. _And_ if you promise to stop brooding."

"I'm not brooding. I just...don't like waiting."

"Willow says..." The voices faded away, as Spike walked closer to the fire. He shook them off, like the memory of rain on his hair. They seemed unnatural, had no place here in the dark. A dream of something happening to someone else.

He couldn't be sure how long he walked, except that the light grew bigger and impossibly brighter -- but at last he stood in front of the fire, and looked. Had to look, though what he saw made him wish he'd stayed in the dark.

It was a pyre. A stake in flames. Virgin tied like Joan of Arc at the center, writhing in her bonds, dressed in white, and screaming soundlessly. Except she wasn't Joan. Wasn't a virgin of any color, not since Spike had still been young enough to hide beneath the blankets.

It was Dru, tall and proud in the red-orange glare, for all her body squirmed. The flames lifted her hair, air currents twisting the curls serpentine around her face, covering wide-open eyes. Red lips open too, calling someone's name. Not his. It might have been Father, it might have been Daddy, but it wasn't Spike. It wasn't even William.

He almost reached, anyway. Almost walked into the fire for her. He'd done it before, and he would, he still would, after all of it, if he had to. But...

No mostly-sane vampire cares much for fire. It burns dead flesh faster, can bring the true death of ashes and emptiness, in seconds, leaving nothing. You'd have to be crazy not to fear it, not to scream and run, not to beg for help. You'd have to be crazy, to laugh as the flames caressed your skin.

He'd seen her do just that in Prague, though. Scream and laugh at the same time, sing as the orange tongues of fire flicked across her wrists, climbed her dress and darted for her hair. The figure on the pyre smiled, now, too late, but it was wrong, and he knew.

It slammed back into his head with startling clarity. Where he was. What was happening. Too clear, like he still had cider in his mouth, pisswater though Dru's brand might be. A drunk's clarity, where _everything_ made sense. "S'a good likeness," Spike said loudly, his voice not catching at all, and why would it, since muscles don't get dusty from disuse, in dreams. "But you don't know her as well as I do. Don't have the smile down. Too many teeth."

The fire blazed brighter for a second, sparks whirling up and around like demented fireflies; then it shrank back down, and down, and down.

She stood across from him, flames vanishing, sucked into her skin. His once and no longer princess, tangled waves of hair draped around her shoulders, white frock not even singed. She shone in her own little circle, something sickly and red, that, like the pyre, gave no light to her surroundings, no light to him. He knew who it was, should have recognized _that_ smile no matter what face she hid behind.

"The dreamer's thoughts give me shape within, unless I choose otherwise," Reikoku said gently -- with Drusilla's mouth, Drusilla's voice. "You called for the light; you gave me her face."

He stared at her, frankly studying his own memory of Dru, and thought she was only partly right. His girl had never stood like that, never quite so mock-humble, as if she was just about to bow. "Haven't had that dream in years," he muttered. Not even after Prague, when it had really happened. He hadn't dreamt of Dru on fire since... He couldn't remember.

"Because I took it from you, long ago, as a favour to her. Only you would manage to call it back, pull it out of my memory, looking for something to frighten yourself with. Baka." The Japanese insult sounded funny in Dru's accent, but he couldn't be sure he'd never heard her say it; she'd liked to play with language, roll foreign words around on her tongue, then forget their meaning five minutes later. Whereas that shit stuck around in _his_ head forever. Baka. Idiot. Fool.

"S'pose I am." Spike nodded, memories, thoughts, falling into place within his head, like he'd finally shaken them into a pattern he could recognize. He almost felt awake. Logical. Drunk-logic, though -- he could tell there was something he was missing, but couldn't see it. "Been you all along, has it?"

She jerked her head once, loose brown curls tumbling around Dru's thin face. "Not as you mean it, no."

"Rei." The laughing voice in his, in Xander's ear. The familiar titter of the hyena, with rings of shark teeth in its wide-open maw. _Course it was her. Should've known it the minute I sussed I was dreaming._ "Game's over. Bugger off. You've had your fun."

He was still startled that he could speak, and so easily, untouched by the ever-present fear that had accompanied him while he'd dreamed himself in Xander's body. So startled that when she lifted one hand to her mouth, he was stilled by it. So elegant. So beautifully oriental, even in Dru's tall, thin, European form. So much older than him, such a different sort of death she was. He was almost as mesmerized as he'd been by Drusilla's eyes, once.

"It isn't me, Suppaiku. Not really." A half-hidden chuckle, still, in her voice. She'd always been so _amused_ by him, laughing secretly at something he'd never understand. "I am just... how did you once describe the war, to me? It's a banquet, Spike, and no one pays attention if you're dressed like the hired help." Her hand took in the dark around her, one swift motion. "I'm just here for the table leavings. I barely had to stir the pot."

"Sod the cryptic Betty Crocker metaphors, Reikoku." His fascination broke. Some part of him had suddenly had it up the here with inscrutable oriental cobbleshite. Call it lack of patience, call it just being Spike. He wasn't getting any younger, and he had things to do. What they were escaped him, but he was pretty sure he had things to do. "Just get out of my head. Kitchen's closed."

She smiled, flashing those extra rows of teeth in Dru's mouth. Shook her head again. "You don't understand, do you. Is it because you're a man? It can't be inherent in vampires; Drusilla was never this much of a fool. But your little boy, the one you say is nothing -- he is. Baka, just like you, down to the stubborn insistence that he can run and run forever, fast enough to escape the monsters that come in by his own invitation." She spoke slowly and clearly, as to a child. "This isn't your head."

He couldn't make sense of it -- had reached the end of his drunken wisdom, and could only stare at her. Rei-Dru sighed, and her sickly red outline flared.

"Do you understand now?" She grew taller, wider, morphed as fast as Dru herself could switch from human face to monster, but it wasn't catlike golden eyes that stared at him. Dark hair shortened, gray eyes darkened to liquid brown, and Spike saw before him what he'd seen in the mirror. Young, vulnerable, frightened. Xander.

He could hear an echo, somewhere on the other side of the darkness -- closer than last time. Angel's voice. It _was_ Angel's voice, had been before. When did _he_ get here? "I'll kill him. Have I mentioned that? Knock his brains out on the floor and make him lick up the mess, set his hair on fire, stick his eyeballs on a toasting fork and hold 'em over the flames til they pop, then rip out his spine and use it for a really short bookrack."

_Hell, that was almost sweet. Sentimental old bastard._ Part of Spike was distracted, a part that had craved that voice, saying those things to him, or the like, for several human lifetimes.

But before him, he saw what he'd been missing, all through this long walk in the dark, and not even his Sire's words could stop him from running to Xander.

"Yes, you've mentioned," Cordelia's voice. "And eww. If I didn't know that's your way of showing you're worried about Spike, I'd --- Angel!"

Spike felt himself grabbed from behind. Invisible arms held him tight, kept him from Xander. "Let me _go_!"

"Spike, are you... He's still asleep. Willow!" Angel's voice, so close, at his ear, now.

"Tara, do you have the stuff ready?" Red. Hell, who invited them all into his dream?

"Everything's here; we had it all in the bag anyway. I don't know if it'll work, though, Willow. I've never used this spell to wake someone _up_ \-- just to make them stay aware when they fall asleep."

"If it doesn't work, we wait some more. If it does, at least Spike'll be awake -- and maybe he can tell us what's happening with Xander. Angel, are you--"

"I'm ready."

"Let. Go. Of. Me." Spike growled, straining to reach the Xander who stood in front of him, one hand reaching up to cover his mouth, which wasn't like Xander at all.

"Let it happen, Spike. Go to them," Xander said. Rei? Spike's mind was getting fuzzier -- arms holding him back, voices in his ears of people who weren't there. "You'll only confuse him, if you stay. It's almost over, anyway. Just go."

Flash. Scent, stronger than anything. Strongest of senses for a vampire, and _this_ smell... Copper and salt and rich and red and sweet, so unbelievably sweet. The first in the world, in his world, was Dru's, but this was older, stronger because the first time he'd accepted it, he'd had a choice. Male and known, completely known, in the dark, in a crowd, anywhere. Held in front of his nose and FLASH.

Eyes half open in too-bright light, fangs breaking free, Angel's face leaning over his shoulder, strong arms around him from behind. Spikecanyouhearme.

And a wrist, at his mouth. Single red pomegranate seed hovering just above his lips, something that, contrariwise, would draw him back into the light for good if he just opened his mouth and tasted. And it had been so _long_...

"Spike?" That voice. Face. Hair flickering between short and long. Like looking at Angel through old, smoked glass, the white of the room distorted into a cold, dank mineshaft, guttering candles everywhere, and Himself lying next to Spike, both of them sated and surprised with each other. A vein, offered to him, and once without hesitation, he'd lowered his mouth to it. "Will? Come on, come back to us."

_He's tryin' to piss me off, see if I'll wake up just so I can thump him,_ Spike thought clearly, even as he had to beat down the part of himself that had never stopped answering to that name. His eyelids flickered.

"Spike?" Tara's voice, tentative. Afraid. For him? Then more sure. "Morpheus, clear the eye. Release the mind that walks your world. You have no hold." Something sharp pierced the fog of Sireblood smell, for a second. Hensbane?

But then Angel, voice and scent so close that it drowned everything out. "Spike, dammit, just wake _up_!"

Spike opened his eyes wide, saw both worlds at once. The hand before his mouth, in the lighted room, the boy in front of him, in the dark.

"Not. Without. Xander." Spike turned his head to one side, felt the drop of Angel's blood roll down his cheek, and closed his eyes.

Forced himself to fall back down into the darkness, Tara's voice following him. "Morpheus, clear the eye. Awaken the mind that walks your world."

It came in a rush. The taste of cider on his tongue, the not-quite-drunk he'd been since then, wiped away. Clear, truly clear, now. Memory whistled past him. Words exchanged like cups of poison. Dull ache of confusion, of 'what did I do?' and the stabbing pain in the center of his chest, and walking away.

Drinking, and sitting, hating himself. The girls coming in, rescuing him from some imagined drunken stupor, and the words he'd spoken about Xander, bitter as crushed bones in his mouth. Then, walking in and seeing her, there, monstrous in ways he couldn't compete with as gray smoke coiled over his boy. The heartbeat he didn't possess, freezing up in his chest.

Walking to him, and touching, and falling. Wind and rain and running and thumping heart and teeth and animal growls and laughing faces that he knew only in their older versions. Their deader versions, some of them. Some he'd never seen at all, never even seen pictures of. Dark eyes in the mirror, and Xander's voice on his tongue.

"Christ." He heard his own voice echo loud around him, then disappear into the dark.

Soft white-noise laughter, in Rei's voice, now. "Hardly. I should say, it has not _been_ your head. Your dream. You simply bullheaded your way into your boy's, and now, finally, you are separate again. Because he was finally frightened enough to let go of you; let go of everything."

Something tore at Spike's ribcage, almost like a heartbeat-- only it had claws and fangs. His own growling animal wasn't fooled by a soft voice, by something that pretended to be harmless. It screamed at him. _mineminemineminemine... shetouchedhimhe'smine_ The rest of him, for once since he'd caged it below the surface, agreed. No need to pretend that Xander was less than everything, not now, not here. She knew, though apparently not enough.

"You _don't_ touch what's mine," he snarled, as he finally understood.

His descent halted, and Xander stood before him again. Not Xander. Xander-Rei, a thing too obscene for words. Spike stared at her, concentrating. _I control the vertical and the horizontal around here, right?_ He willed her to be as she truly was, as he remembered her, and Xander's body faded into fog. Reformed, a small, straight figure in leather, with long, long hair, and tilted black eyes. _You can't have his face. He's mine._

The Gaki sighed. "I've no intention of harming him. I told you -- he's doing this to himself. It won't be long, Spike. Go back to your friends. Sit and wait, and tell them the boy will wake up soon."

"Let Xander go," he ordered, gravel-mouthed, "or so help me, you'll find out just how much I learned from the eyeball-popper out there -- and just how much I taught him." He turned around, ready to lay hands on her throat, but there was no one there.

"Spike, just open your eyes, and get out of my way. You're making a fool of yourself."

"I'm not leavin' him alone with you," Spike snarled, and though he knew where he was, knew he couldn't touch her, the demon was still screaming at him that there was a point to be made. He lunged at her, hands reaching for a narrow white throat.

"Be a fool, then, Suppaiku," she hissed. "Tilt at windmills, be his knight, try to snatch him up and carry him away -- but it isn't me you'll have to save him from."

He sailed right through her, falling again in the darkness.

"Baka."

Spike didn't know what direction to flip the bird in, since he couldn't see her -- so he just told her loudly to fuck off, in Japanese. Followed by every other insult he could think of in that language. Made for something to do while he fell.

*****

Lights on. Have they only been out for a second? Xander looks for Buffy, to tell her she has to grow up, fight the thing that's outside. Even though it's his to fight, he wants to run to her. One girl in all the world, and it's not him, and for a moment, he wants to believe Willow was right. That it's okay to let the Chosen One do it.

Then he sees his friends, sitting at their desks. Buffy. Willow. Tara. Cordy.

"No."

He can't look at the room, can't look at his friends, can't look at what covers the floor. _You invited it inside._ Can't look, so he doesn't. _Can't see you..._

*****

Spike fell until he hit, same as before. This time, though, he knew where he was, right away. He was back in the classroom -- and it was a charnel house.

A picture so pretty that the demon shouted loudly at him to get down on the linoleum and just roll in the blood. He didn't, but Spike almost slipped in it anyway, when one boot skidded in a puddle of red. His own boots, his own jeans, his own coat slapping around his calves, own arm reaching out for balance. His own nose, smelling the richness of copper-scented death, oxidizing as it pooled around the bodies slumped in their desks.

_If this is Xander's dream, not mine, then... Bloody hell. Literally. What the fuck lives in his head? God, no wonder he came apart on me when he had that nightmare._

Spike walked over to the nearest desk, and lifted Cordelia's head. The hundred-dollar haircut swung bouncily away to reveal a savaged throat, the ludicrous literary vampire-hickeys replaced with death as he knew it -- as he'd dealt it a thousand thousand times. Great gaping, ragged hole, torn flesh, tiny gobbets of meat. He let it fall into the pool of blood on her desktop. _It's not real. She's not dead; she's out there annoying the Sire, more power to her._

Willow and Tara were the same, bloodless white hands joined as if they'd planned to work some spell to defend themselves. But Rei was immune to magic; whatever dream-monster she'd sent after Xander would be just as well-protected from Xander's imaginary witches.

_Vampire. Dream-vampire._ He winced. The thought hadn't escaped him; he didn't need reminding from snarky mind-voice number whatever. _Why's she sending vampires to chase him, of all things? Why would he be afraid of us, with all the beasties he's seen?_ He walked around, lifting heads, letting them fall, hoping that the next one wouldn't be Xander. _It's a dream. It's his dream. He won't be dead. Just need to figure out where he is, so I can wake him up and get him outta here._ He focused on that, ignoring the grumbling thing that was telling him to feast on the table leavings. _Not like it's real blood, moron._

Spike the detective, he suddenly thought. Just his own brand of insanity, to picture himself searching for Xander, wearing that black fedora, the room in black and white, the blood on the floor looking like the chocolate syrup they really did use in old films. He could suddenly feel the pressure of the band around his forehead, see the shadow of the brim. Spike reached up to touch the hat he'd dreamed into place on his head, and almost grinned.

But the blood was still red and bright, and the desk where he and Xander's dream body had sat was still empty, except for the still-wrapped bar of chocolate Willow had offered, and Xander had refused. He hadn't turned into Sam Spade, with all the clues laid out in front of him - or if they were, he couldn't read them.

Spike pocketed the candy bar absently, aware that it was no more real than the blood, than the hat, but unable to let it sit there, somehow. He looked across the aisle; on the empty desk in front of Willow lay two pieces of paper. One piece, rather, ripped in two: "SA" on the first fragment, "VED" on the second. They hadn't been, had they. Not by witch-powers, and not by the Slayer in the seat across from them.

Changeable ocean-coloured eyes stared at him, sightless and dull. The fighting light was gone, that had always made him unsure if he wanted to kill or kiss her, until she opened her mouth and let out that mind-bleaching whine. She was still the child she'd been when he'd last seen her, before the lights went out -- the little normal girl who didn't want to fight anything, who blew Giles off when she first got to Sunnydale. Spike heard Xander's words again, in a darkened fake-theatre, so many hours ago that it seemed like days. That little girl's pouting mouth was forever closed, now.

"It's just a dream," he said aloud. Buffy wasn't dead -- and any regret he felt at the sight of those lightless eyes was probably just because he hadn't gotten to be the one to extinguish them. "Where is he?" he asked her, quietly. "What happened to you? What's he running from?"

"Spike?"

He whirled around from Buffy's desk, his own reflexes working faster than his mind's ability to recognize the voice. A head covered with pale blonde hair lifted from a desk by the window.

"Harmony? You're alive?"

She nodded, looking terrified. Mindblown, and Harmony hadn't much of a mind to blow. She sat up, and looked around at the classroom. "Well, not alive."

Spike smacked his forehead. "It's a vampire. Course it wouldn't touch you."

Harmony shook her head. "That doesn't matter. Not here. I just hid, and he didn't see me."

"He, who? Who did this? And where's Xander?" Spike walked over to her, as he asked.

Terror was suddenly replaced by an unattractive scorn. "Oh, _him_. The little crybaby scaredy-cat. He _ran_. He's gone."

Spike grabbed her by the hair and drew her up, so she stood on tiptoe, face strained with discomfort -- an old, familiar position. "Where did he _go_, Harm, and what's chasing him? I don't have time to put up with your shit."

Her expression changed again. Frightened blue eyes looked straight back at him, and he recoiled. Blinked and let go. Not because of any guilt at hurting _Harmony_ \-- she'd known what she was getting into when they got together, played the pain games as much as he had -- just hadn't been willing to admit to it when called on it.

But.

This wasn't Harmony's dream, was it. He recognized that shattered look -- he'd glimpsed it in dark eyes, by silver streetlight, as his lover shuddered in his lap at Cordelia's place. He'd watched it unblinking, a few nights earlier, until those eyes had finally fluttered closed, and he'd snuck off to go find the hand lotion.

"Xander?" he said softly.

Wild shaking of the mussed blonde hair as she slid down into her seat. "Eww! Do I _look_ like a boy? Especially _him_. You're nuts!"

But this wasn't Harmony's denial face; it was Xander's -- and it wasn't just her head shaking, but her whole body. Spike winced, flexed the hand that had hurt her, almost cursing his lucidity, now. _Brilliant, Spike. You might as well be the thing that's scaring him._ "Xan..."

"He's a freak, and a fraidy-cat, and he ran away. He _always_ runs away. He used to run off the playground when we were little, when the big kids came, and Willow and..." Harmony lowered her head. "Him. Willow and him used to stick up for Xander, but he didn't deserve it. He always screws everything up."

"Xan..." The shaking started again, and Spike stopped. Reached out a hand and placed it atop her head, gently. Sure, still, of whose head this really was. "All right. Harm. Who's 'him'? Somebody you all knew in school? Why's Xander afraid of him?"

"Because. Because Xander fucked up. I told you. Lame-boy fucked up and let him in, and lame-boy fucked up and let him go in the first place, and lame-boy fucked up and couldn't... couldn't clean up his own mess. And _now_ see what he did." She pointed to the corpses all around her, of her friends. Xander's friends. "Over and over. It just happens over and over, because he's too chicken to stop it."

Spike leaned over the desk, and brushed aside the long strands of blonde fringe hanging in her eyes. If he stared close, he could see the outline of the word that Willow had scrubbed off, faint on the skin of her forehead. He looked past that, though, to the eyes he knew, whatever color they might be pretending to at the moment. "Tell me."

Frown. Blink, and SLAM. The room disappeared.

Dark again. Running through the cemetery once more, only this time he could see Xander. Like the black and white film he'd been imagining before, grainy because dreaming Xander couldn't really have seen himself, could only imagine what he'd looked like then, as he fed it to Spike now.

The hand in Xander's was Willow's, so young and white and frightened in the moonlight that her eyes were just dark holes in the pale face. The body between them was tall, male. Beaky and gangly, and as young as the ones who carried him. No one Spike had ever seen before, not on the streets of Sunnydale, not in the raid on the high school, not in any of the pictures he'd rifled through in Xander's albums or shoeboxes. Spike could see his throat, as that imagined movie camera zoomed in. Bleeding chocolate-syrup wounds, closer to the neat little fake bites on Cordelia's neck, than the raw mess it was now. Somebody'd been snacking, and got interrupted, and now they were running.

Then there were snarls, the ones he'd heard in that brief flash in the hallway. A male vamp closing in from the left, and from the right, a blonde in a short skirt and sweater. In the darkness, it took a second for Spike to recognize it as a Catholic school uniform. In the fuzziness of Xander's memory, it took two beats longer for him to know the face, vamped and grinning.

Darla. He knew she'd been here, knew Angel had staked her, but it had never even occurred to Spike that Xander had met her.

_Met her?_ Spike laughed, painfully, as he watched it happen. Met her. Right.

He watched as Xander had his friend torn from his arms while she laughed, while Willow shouted, "Jesse!" into the darkness, and Xander stood there, clutching Red for all he was worth, lest somebody pull her away from him too. Then they ran for a pool of light where Spike could see the slight figure of the Slayer standing. Xander never looked over his shoulder, though Darla's laughter echoed out of the night at him, until the end. Until he stared back into utter darkness, with nothing visible but the tombstones.

And now Spike knew who wasn't "SAVED," didn't he. Someone who'd come back in Xander's dreams to wreak havoc among his former friends. Normally, he'd say 'Hurrah, good times' to the havoc-wreaking -- but not here. Not in his boy's head. He almost muttered an apology to Rei, for thinking she'd invented the horror herself -- until he recalled how long Xander must have been asleep. _She may not have written the script, but she's been making him watch the flick. Not letting him wake up._ Spike opened his eyes. He was back in the classroom, standing over the desk. Harmony looked up at him, frowning again. "It's no big deal. The Hellmouth gets kids all the time. _I_ got vamped, and he never freaked out over me."

"You weren't his best friend. He wasn't holding your hand." Spike wiped the hair out of her face, and looked at her forehead again. Then he bent down, and put his hand on hers. "It wasn't your fault, Xan."

She stiffened. "I'm not Xander! You're as crazy as he is. Loony as that pretty, perfect ex-girlfriend you never shut up about. Why don't you go find _her_? Go read her the yellow pages or something."

"He's not crazy. And you're not Harmony." Spike spoke over the closing of his throat, because he knew it wasn't really there. His mind only made him think he had a throat to close, as he remembered the look on Xander's face, and him the utter moron who couldn't pick it up, that he'd been rabbiting on about Dru at lunch like it was her he'd barely missed staying in bed with that morning, instead of the boy who'd sat next across the table from him.

He knelt next to the desk, and said to her -- to Xander, "Xan... It's over. You're safe. None of this is real -- it's just a bad dream. All you have to do is open your eyes and wake up."

"I'm NOT Xander! And it's not over. It's not safe. Nobody's safe. Leave me alone!" She was-- that is, he was, Xander, though. The face melted and blurred before Spike's eyes. Panicked dark pupils, huge in liquor coloured irises. Dark brown hair.

"No. I won't do that." Spike leaned forward, and gathered the figure in the desk into his arms. It really didn't matter what Xander looked like -- young, old, girl, boy. "You _are_ safe, Xander. I won't let anything hurt you. You just have to wake up."

"No! You're not real!" Xander pushed Spike away with a force that he would only possess in dreams, at least as long as he lived in a human body. Before Spike could even rise from the sprawl he had landed in, Xander was running from the room.

_No way. I'm not losin' you, not lettin' you get lost in the dark. Not again. This time when you run, somebody catches you who loves you._

Spike was after him in a second, racing out the door and down the hall. The building was dark now, smelled of charred meat and death, as it should. He could just see Xander's tennis shoes disappearing around the corner, and he followed, picking up speed. He mightn't be Sam Spade, but this, he could do. He tipped his imaginary detective hat, as he passed the empty suit that Xander's mouthy little principal had been wearing, laid out on the floor.

They ran past lockers and classrooms. Past the empty library, where Spike could hear sounds coming from the Hellmouth within that made him glad it had never opened when he'd been around. Through the door at the end of the hall and out into the rain again.

*****

It looks like Spike. It sounds like Spike. But it doesn't talk like Spike, and it's telling him things that he wants too much to believe. It's okay. I won't let anybody hurt you. Too easy to accept, but that's not Spike. Spike's using him for a warm hole and somebody to share a bed with, and the echo of someone he can't ever have back. Xander knows that, knows he'll settle for that, too. If he lets himself believe anything else...

He used to let himself believe that if he just wished hard enough, he'd come to school in the morning and everybody would be in their seats, no empty one, no memories of the night that no one ever talked about, to show him why it was empty. He'd lean over and poke Jesse in the arm and point out how short Miss Wasserman's skirt was, and Willow would roll her eyes, and Buffy...

No. That way lies Xander in a rubber room, and he might be a little bit crazy, but he's not that crazy. He knows. He knows what happened and he knows what's chasing him with Spike's face now, and whose face is really under it.

Fine. He knows where to run. Knows it's always led to this, that this is what he comes back to night after night, but never quite has the balls to face. This time, though... It _will_ be different. It might be faster than him, but that doesn't matter, for once, because he's not running away. He won't end up purely by accident at Brookside Park, with Giles on the swing, with Spike sitting next to him, arms open, waiting to almost rescue him in time. Not now.

Past Buffy's house, past Willow's, lights out. No welcome there, but why would there be, when they're dead, back in that classroom. Across sidewalks and over gutters and down alley shortcuts that he knows from years of running, in dreams, in life.

For once, he's not running from; he's running to.

*****

Spike ran, never looking at anything but Xander's shoes, flashing white in the distance. Familiar parts of town, bathed in the sheen of rain, fading as Xander passed, because the dream was only concerned with what Xander could see.

He thought he had an idea where they were going, at one point, when he caught sight of a familiar drive, a suburban house, story and a half, Bel Aire parked neatly at the back. There. Home? Xander's illusion of a safe place?

But Xander paused for a second only, by the basement window, almost long enough for Spike to catch up, then was off again. As Spike came near the open window, coat slapping against his calves, he heard the sound of smacking, steady, flesh on flesh. Growled and slowed, almost stopped, thinking this time - chip or no chip, if they hurt him...

Then, a voice more familiar than anything asked in a hopeless muddled English accent, "What am I punishing you _for_, Xander?"

Time froze, for a second, and Spike wondered just how stupid you had to be, to join Angel's little detective agency. As stupid as him? "Fine, I get it, all right?" Spike shouted after his fleeing lover. "You think it's all your fault. But it's not real, Xander. It was a long time ago. Just bloody stop!"

But Xander didn't stop, didn't act like he even heard, so Spike ran again, faster now, hearing his Docs scuff in the grass and on the gravel and down the road.

*****

Away from home, just needed to check on the place, make sure everything was okay. Away and splashing down the street where he's always been going, where he goes all the time, when his eyes are open and he's meeting Buffy, Willow, Anya there. Rhythmic thudding behind him on the road, didn't lose the thing with Spike's face, but then he didn't expect to. He knows where he's going, wants it to follow.

Music getting louder in the distance as he hits the bad side of town. Bad side, like there's a good side, like there's anything good about the Hellmouth on a Friday night. Lights of the Bronze shining like a beacon.

_Betcha didn't think I'd come here, didja. Didn't think I had the 'nads. Well, why the hell not? If it's gonna be anywhere, might as well do it here._Heavy beat, not of feet behind him now, but synthesized drums, from inside.

He knows it didn't happen quite this way. The song was over, ending as he and Willow and Giles climbed from the car and snuck around back, as he's doing now. But he'd heard enough, to remember it now. He'd known the song already, had the words playing in his head over the silence and the sound of his own heart beating as the door opened and they'd slipped inside. _How are you feelin'... do you feel okay? Cause I don't..._ He pulls on the back door. It isn't locked.

Only him now, only Xander, as it always should've been. This is _his_ deal. Buffy can kill the guy onstage, fine. Throw a cymbal at somebody, whatever. Giles, Willow... This isn't their job. It's his. He was the one who didn't keep an eye on Jesse in the first place, and that was his job, right? Not my day to watch him, they'd always joked, but it _was_ his day to watch both of them, and he'd only held on to Willow, and now...

Now he's here. In the dark, with the music and the bodies, pushing at each other. Here, and there's a stake in his hand, and he has a job to do. "Have you come to kill what's left of my smile?" someone sings from the speakers, but he thinks maybe it's already dead.

*****

Where? Where was he? Spike pushed his way through the crowd, past the press of faceless, dancing teenagers. Literally faceless, as if they didn't matter to Xander, didn't star in this particular flick, so his mind didn't have time to draw eyes and noses on them.

It was the Bronze, but tilted. Out of sync. Music too loud, dancers moving in slow motion. The sweat and stink of too many people not perfume in his nose, but madness. The dance club was lit eerily, lights flickering on and off.

"I wish I could've saved you..." the teenage whine-band moaned, and the lights went red. People screamed, and Spike could sense panic. Pushing and running. He moved to the dance floor, cutting through the crowd as if they - or he - didn't exist, to see what it was.

Vampires. There were vamps in gameface out there. Not really doing anything but growling, shoving, causing pandemonium -- which was good enough entertainment, but you'd think they'd be biting, draining, tearing it up. Or at least pushing people up towards the stage where the Slayer, somehow alive again because Xander's dream didn't have to make sense, stood in the spotlight, next to a vamp at least a foot taller than Angel. Frozen.

Spike could've kicked himself for even bothering to look, for not figuring it out sooner. He'd have to turn in the detective hat and admit he was the sidekick in front of all and sundry, at this rate. Frozen. Because they were window-dressing. Props, in Xander's nightmare. The only place anything would be happening was where Xander was. Everything else was a distraction.

He looked around for something that looked real, not random. Listened for actual words, over the pounding of the music. A scream -- a loud, familiar one. Cordelia's voice, followed by shouting. "Get _off_ me!"

That'd be it, then.

*****

Xander knows the words by heart, though he never told them what he said, though he doesn't ever dream about this part, just running from it. Until now. The words live in his head, here, at this hell-place that's just... the Bronze, out in the real world.

"Jesse, man. Don't make me do it." Here, now, he's a kid again, Valley-speak in his mouth, sweat in his eyes.

The thing with its back to him, the thing that followed him here, stands up from where it's crouched over Cordy. Turns around. Looks him up and down.

"You again? Man, don't you have anything _better_ to do? You could dream about naked chicks or something, you know." Jesse's face is human. Smiling, even though it's more of a sneer than a real smile.

"Jesse. I know there's still a part of you in there." Even now... even though he knows it's not real, hasn't ever been real, Xander wants to believe that it's true.

A part of someone who played in the sandbox with him when he was six. Who made up the sharks that live there, because he had the longest legs, and could jump from one edge to the other the easiest. Who loaned him milk money and always gave Xander half of his Nutty Bar at lunch, and laughed at him when he broke it apart and licked all the peanut butter off before he ate the chocolate-covered wafers. Who brass-balled his way into the back room at Video Hut to rent 'Sinderella,' freshman year, when Xander was too much of a chicken.

"Or dream about naked dudes, if that's your thing now," Jesse goes on as if Xander hadn't spoken. "But this," he points at Cordy, at the darkness, at the stage, back at Xander. "It's gettin' old, bud. Hell, even _I'm_ sick of it, and I _like_ terrorizing girls. Or would've, anyway, if I hadn't got staked."

"Wh-- What?"

"Dude, you're almost twenty. Get over the trauma, already. I'm dead. Everybody else moved on. What's wrong with you?"

There's a script, dammit. There's a song playing, there's heat and light and bodies, and there's Jesse standing in front of him. He's supposed to vamp out now, and Xander's supposed to try to kill him, and fail. Like he always fails, at the important things. He's not supposed to be talking like this. How can Xander answer that speech with what he really said, when no one was looking, while everyone was watching Buffy?

He does anyway. "Jesse, I don't wanna kill you. I don't wanna lose you, man. What am I supposed to do?"

Why doesn't Jesse say what he really did, which was, "You kill me, Xan, or you die. That's really all there is."

Instead, he says, in Spike's voice, "You wake up, Xander," as he starts to turn his head. Then he collapses into dust.

*****

The stake in his hand was a good one; he'd crafted it from the memory of one the Slayer had held against his chest, while he taunted her about her love life. He could feel the scratch of wood on skin, even now. And it worked the way they're supposed to work, the way every stake he'd held in the last six months had worked on every one of his fellow vamps whom he'd slain, post-chip.

The boy started to whirl, as he said the words, then, POOF.

"It's over," Spike said gently, as Xander stared at him in shock. "I told you -- I won't let anybody hurt you, ever again. Not even you."

Xander said nothing, just stared at him, open-mouthed. Looked from the stake in Spike's hand to the one in his own. Finally, he moved forward, and Spike opened his arms.

Xander hit him, a hard right to the jaw. "Dammit! Look what you did!"

Just like before, in Xander's dream world, when he needed strength, he had it. Spike went down, the stake in his hand clattering to the floor. Xander followed swiftly, throwing his stake away as well -- but he wasn't seeing to Spike, or apologizing. He was gathering up the pile of dust on the floor, sweeping it into his hands.

"Come on. Come back. Come back!" He was almost in tears, his voice raw and hoarse. Xander threw the handful of dust into the air, and in the outline it formed, Spike saw fear.

_He's mad. He really is broken into little pieces._ As the lean, tall shape reformed itself in front of Xander, Spike heard laughter over his shoulder. He sat up, to find a hand being offered to him.

Darla's hand, extending from the white sleeve of that kinky schoolgirl uniform. Her face was human now, as it hadn't been in Xander's memory of the cemetery, and as haughtily beautiful as Spike remembered it.

"Of course I look like you remember her," Rei agreed. It hadn't occurred to him that she could hear his thoughts, but of course she could. It was all thought, here. She'd known what he was thinking all along, told him to back off, but he wouldn't listen. "You're providing my features," she reminded him. "The boy is too busy resurrecting his friend, so that he can fail to kill him again."

Spike rubbed his jaw, the dream punch as painfully real as the one Xander had thrown at him at his own request, on Giles' front porch, under the lamplight. _Think, Phillip Bloody Marlowe,_ he snarked at himself. _What is it. What am I missing? Why didn't it work for me to kill the kid? Why's Xander brought him back?_

A soft voice answered him, from deep within his own head. _Why does he come back here, Spike? He has nightmares, yes, of course, lots of people do, but why this boy, chasing him? Why over and over, as he said? Why?_

Because he wanted to.

"He's... not a boy," Spike said slowly. "He's not mad, either."

*****

Xander holds the stake up. He knows how to use it, has known for years now, though he only had a vague idea back then. He's not Buffy, but he can defend himself. "Come on, Jesse. Let's...just get this over with." If he drags it out, maybe it'll last a little longer, this time.

But this time it's Jesse who sticks to the script. "Okay... Let's deal with this. Jesse was an excruciating loser who couldn't get a date with anyone in the sighted community! Look at me. I'm a new man!"

"Yeah. Look at him, Xander."

The voice is Spike's, but Spike can't be here. Spike can't have staked Jesse for him, like some random moron had done it the last time. That was just his own mind, coming up with newer and loopier ways to make him fuck this up. This voice now, it isn't real.

"None of it's real, Xander. It's a dream. But I think you know that."

There's laughter, from Miss Thing, who's wearing the bitchy girl vamp's face now, smiling blonde and pretty and just another distracting thing to throw at him. It's not mocking, though. It's appreciative, admiring of what his dream-Spike said.

"Very good, Spike. You figured out after two weeks of sleeping with him, what it took me a whole night to determine."

Spike, on the floor, rubs his jaw. Picks up the hat he was wearing and puts it on his head -- and why is Spike wearing a hat, in this dream? Especially Xander's hat. "Well, you're the professional. I'm just his lover. Remind me to kill you, by the way, when this is over. I told you, nobody fucks with what's mine." He starts to stand.

"Hey, is somebody gonna kill _me_ here, or what?" Jesse asks with a growl. Xander looks, and sees the face that looks like Spike's, but not, yellow eyes, wrinkled brow. Jesse's holding his hand out, and in it is Xander's stake. "Cause, y'know, I've got things to do."

Xander tries not to take it, but Jesse presses it into his hand.

"It's time. I've been waiting for you to get here for years, bud."

*****

"But he does this to himself," Rei said. "I told you -- I'm only collecting the leftovers. This is a hell of his own invention -- in a way, it's much more creative than Gaki-do."

Spike held out his hand, then, and grasped her outstretched one. Stood, and looked at her. Subject of enough of his own nightmares, but here, in this half-lit place, he had to wonder why. Whatever Darla had done, she was dust, as was the boy who stood before Xander. _They_ were the ones who were still alive, or what passed for it. He and Xander. Angel. Even Dru, wherever she was, and the Slayer, at a hotel in Santa Barbara shagging her brains out with Agent Huckleberry Finn. And Xander had found his own way of coping with that.

He spoke past Darla's face, to the one behind it. "Xander may've invented it -- but you pushed him to it, tonight. He said he didn't need the bravest, wisest knight in all the land to tuck him in, before he stomped off upstairs. He never heard that from me, and he's barely met Dru."

She smiled, a small, sly Darla-smile. "We spoke. He's very brave, your boy."

He snarled, though this time he knew better than to bother letting the beast have reign. "You messed about with his head, Reikoku." A little grin of his own made its way to his lips. "Only I'm allowed to do that. You... If I _ever_ see you again, I'll happily kick you back into Gaki-do so hard your great grand-mum'll get dragged down there with you.""

"But it's about to end. If he plays this dream through to its end, I can take it away, as I did yours. That I get a free meal, a delicious one, is merely a side-effect -- he'll be free of this nightmare forever. Isn't that what you want for him?"

Spike stared coldly at her. "It's his head. He's a grown man. It's not about what I want." With that, he turned away. Walked over to the two who stood next to the wall, the imaginary dead boy, the real, living man.

"Xander?" There was no answer, but Spike hardly expected one. He tapped the vampire on the shoulder. "Er. Jesse, right?"

"Yeah, man. You mind? We got something happening, here."

"I'll just be a minute. Have a Coke and a smile and relax."

Jesse blinked, as real as Xander wanted to make him, and slowly moved out of Spike's way.

"Xan..."

Now Xander looked up at him. "I have to kill him."

"No, you don't. You don't have to kill him." Spike put his hands on Xander's shoulders, and watched as his lover changed. The shape of his haircut, from long in front, to long all over. The width of his frame, the muscles in his chest and arms. Spike could _feel_ it, spreading out across Xander's body.

"I do. I've gotta. It's gotta be me. Nobody can do it for me."

"No. Nobody can do it for you -- but you don't have to do it, Xander." Spike pulled him close. Felt the warm body stiffen in his embrace.

"I'm not a little kid. I'm not crazy. I _know_ he's dead. I know. You don't have to take care of me."

He tried to pull away, but Spike held on. "No. You don't need anybody to take care of you. You manage just fine on your own. Think I might need somebody to take care of _me_, mind you... Your brain's a scary place." A shudder against him, and Spike touched his hair. "Xander, you don't have to kill him."

Xander shook his head, as wildly as he had when he'd been Harmony, in the classroom. "I _know_ he's dead! I told you. But here, he's not, and I'm s'posed to..."

"Why can't you do it, then?" Spike whispered. "You know he's dead. You know it's not real. You _know_ it's just a dream. So why can't you kill him?" He knew the answer, but it wasn't him who needed to hear it.

"Because..." Xander whispered quietly.

"Come on. You can tell me. It's just me, Xan. Nobody else who matters can hear." Rei stood off in the distance, white checks in Darla's uniform glowing under the light. Waiting to eat her fill. Not if Spike could help it. And Jesse... was frozen in the light, forever standing with the face of a monster, just out of Xander's reach.

"Because it's the only way I can have him." Xander's dream breath was warm against Spike's face. "Out there...nobody talks about him. Nobody remembers he was real, not even Willow. Sometimes I think I imagined him. But here, even like this, he's real. Even if he's a monster, at least... at least I can see him."

Spike hadn't been keeping the monsters at bay, sleeping with his arms around Xander every night -- at least not all of them. He'd just been keeping Xander from seeing the one that he wanted to see, even if he didn't know it when he was awake. The one he was willing to brave the nightmare to see again. Spike tightened his arms around Xander, and closed his eyes.

"You think I'm crazy. You're not even the real Spike, you're just me, and you _still_ think I'm crazy. Like her. Like Dru."

"No. No, luv, I don't."

"And you think I'm a wimp, 'cause I couldn't kill him, and somebody else had to do it for me. Not even on purpose. Just brushed him up against the stake and ffft. Gone. Xander, the fucking coward, who can't stake one vamp at point blank range. You only hang around me because I remind you of Drusilla. "Cause it makes you feel less pathetic, if you can take care of poor loony Xander."

Once, the words had made him turn away, but now, Spike knew what was prompting them. "No. I don't. I don't think you're a wimp, or a coward. I think you're about the bravest person I know, for comin' back here, walkin' into hell night after night, just to see somebody you loved."

The Bronze darkened around them, Jesse looking once at them, then fading away completely. The only light was the soft red glow that surrounded Rei. Spike watched her shake her head once, then smile, then she, too, faded, and they were left in darkness. There was only Xander, in his arms.

"I'm afraid," Spike heard, after long silence.

"There's nothin' to be afraid of. You just have to wake up now."

"That's what I'm afraid of. I don't wanna lose this. Don't wanna forget him. Don't you get it? I _am_ crazy. Fuck, maybe I do need to be taken care of. But who the hell would want somebody like me?"

"I do. I want you. You're mine." Spike whispered it into Xander's skin, the things he'd been afraid to say for so long.

"But you're not real." A sudden, hard push away from him, and Spike was staring at Xander as he knew him now. "That's not real, it's just what I want to hear. You're not even a good fake-Spike -- he'd never say things like that. Get away from me. Go."

"Xan--"

"You're not real! Go! Get out of my head!"

The lights went out again.

*****

Spike opened his eyes, to find himself lying in bed. _Just a dream. Just my dream, after all,_ he thought for a moment. But his arms were still around Xander, and he'd never yet had a bad dream while Xander lay next to him.

"Spike's awake!" There was a joy he hadn't expected, in Willow's voice. She leaned over the bed, smiling widely. "Spike, you did it -- or one of you did. She's gone!"

"Gone? Huuhhh...who?" he yawned. Tired. For all the dreaming he'd been doing, he was tired as all hell. Spike laid his head down on Xander's chest. Fuck who knew what. They'd sort it out in the morning. "Gone?" He blinked sleepily. "Hey, how'd I get over here?" He'd been knocked across to the other bed, right?

"You ran over to Xander, when we tried to wake you up," Tara told him. "Angel couldn't even stop you."

"Yeah, _that_ spell didn't exactly work like a charm," Willow said, sounding momentarily disappointed. Then she was cheerful again. "But who cares -- the ghostie's gone, anyway! She just kinda... dissolved, a few minutes ago. Did you chase her away?"

"Yeah, kinda. I guess. Hey, Xan, budge over," Spike murmured. But Xander wouldn't. Spike looked up at his face. His eyes were closed. Spike sat up, never letting go. "Xander?" No answer.

"Hey, Xander, come on. Wake up. Everything's okay, now." Willow was leaning over them, shaking Xander's shoulder. Spike growled, lightly, and she stood back, brow furrowing. "Spike?"

"What do you _mean_ everything's okay? My boss is dating one of my ex-boyfriends, an evil vampire is cuddling up with the other, and Lindsey freakin' MacDonald knew about the second one before I did!" Cordelia shouted from the other side of the room. "I can _not_ be the last to know something like this. It's not allowed!"

"Cordy, shut up," Willow said.

"I'm not your ex-boyfriend," Angel's pet Watcher protested quietly. "And Angel and I aren't dating."

"No, you're just making out behind the potted plants. And you and I went out. Once."

"Cordy, _Wesley_, shut _up_." Willow's voice was suddenly strident, loud. Commanding. Spike could picture the leatherette vampire version Xander had told him about, suddenly. "Xander still hasn't woken up."

Then, Cordelia was quiet. Spike felt a hand on his shoulder, and was about to risk a chip-zap to growl a lot more meaningfully at Willow, when he smelled the faint scent of dried blood on the wrist, and the utter familiarity of the owner. "Spike?"

"Sod off. I'll talk to you later." Spike pulled Xander upright, and spoke straight into his face. "Wake up." Nothing. "Fucking hell, Xander, open your eyes. It's over. The ghost's gone, the good guys won, everybody's throwing a great whopping party, and you're missing it."

Tara walked to the side of the bed, and laid her hand on Xander's hair. "I don't think he's really asleep, Spike," she said, worriedly. "He's just... not awake."

Spike growled, again. "I _know_ that, Madame Cleo. He's staying in there on purpose."

Willow moved to her side. "But... he can't be. Why?" She sounded hurt, like Xander was doing this just to get at her.

"Because it's the only place he can get things that you won't even bloody talk to him about!" Spike snapped, uncaring at the moment whether she deserved it or not, and knowing full well that she wouldn't understand him.

He turned his head away from them. Away from all of them, away from everything except the man in his arms. "Xander, I know you can hear me. So you have a choice. You can either listen to me make an ass of m'self in front of all of your friends, or you can open your eyes and tell me to stuff it -- but I'm not lettin' go of you, and I'm not shutting up 'til you do." Silence, except for rain against the glass doors, and he was staring at closed eyelids. "Fine. I warned you, mind. I don't do lengthy speeches, so if I start repeating m'self, somebody jog me, and I'll throw in a bit of _Much Ado About Nothing_, or something. Here goes."

Deep breath. He could do this. Didn't matter who was listening. Didn't matter what they thought, or what happened to him after. Just Xander. "I don't think you're nuts, except in a good way. I think you're bloody stupid for not ever telling anybody what was wrong, but not insane. I do think you're crazy, though, if you decide to spend the rest of your life inside your skull with a dead boy, when there's live people out here who love you. Least one who misses him as much as you do, I bet. He'll be there, next time, if you want to go back, Xander."

Even if it meant Spike sleeping on the floor every night at the foot of the bed, guarding him from the real monsters while he met with the one he wanted to see. Assuming, of course, Xander didn't send him packing, for letting Princess Vision Girl and the witches hear all this. The witches, who made small sounds of surprise, as one or both finally twigged to what he was talking about -- but Spike looked only at Xander.

"I don't think you're a wimp because you couldn't kill him -- it wasn't your responsibility, Xander. I think you even know that. But if you're too scared to come out and face the fact that it was really me in there, and everything I said was true, then yeah. You _are_ a coward."

There was a stirring in his arms, but the eyes remained stubbornly closed.

"Because this isn't about Dru, Xander. This was _never_ about Dru. It's about you, and it's about me, and when I said I wanted you, I meant it. Not for sex, pet. For you. I never meant it to happen, but it did, and there's nothin' I can do about it. I'm sorry if it pisses you off, but there's at least one dead person out here who loves you too."

A flicker of the eyelids. He was trading his dignity for an eyelash-flicker. Just a flicker, as Spike gave up everything he'd been holding so close, so afraid to tell for fear that Xander would... would what, own him? _Hell, I wore a bleedin' Hawaiian shirt for the man! Might as well tattoo property of Xander Harris on my arse and be done with it._ Besides, what dignity did he have left, now?

"I know you heard me, you stubborn son of a bitch. You can't hide in there forever. I'm gonna keep sayin' it over and over til you tell me to stop, no matter how much it embarrasses you -- I love you."

Another flicker, a small squirm, and somewhere Cordy was saying, "Oh, that's so sweet! In an utterly depraved and obsessive way."

"You can be as big a jackass as you like. You can boot me out of your head for sayin' it, but that doesn't make it not true. You can kick me out of your flat, out of your life, for sayin' it in front of your friends, and if you tell me to go, I will. But I'll still love you."

And Spike was not going to blubber in front of these people. He was _not_. Even though he could feel the little pricks in his eyelids that signaled something he hadn't done in mixed company in over a hundred years. He wouldn't, couldn't. Not in front of Angel, who'd told him once that it didn't mean he wasn't a man. He _knew_ that -- had known it ever since -- but he'd never give the Ponce the satisfaction of knowing he'd taught Spike any lasting lessons. Unless, of course, Xander didn't open his eyes in about five seconds.

"You're a moody, irritating, neurotic science fiction geek with absolutely no taste in clothes, and I'm runnin' out of things to say between the I love you's, so I might have to start quoting Shakespeare any second now, and scarin' the kiddies. But I love you anyway, and if you're good and wake up for me, I think I have a chocolate bar in my pocket. Now, open your eyes, dammit, or I swear I'll turn you over my knee and spank you within an inch of your life, government chip be damned. I--"

"Spike?"

"What?" He didn't dare stop talking now. He was on a roll. "I was just getting to the bit where I say 'I even love your saggy old boxer shorts.'"

"I heard you the first time." Xander opened his eyes. "Did you say you had chocolate? I'm hungry."

 

**Author's Note:**

> LA LA LA LA SPOILERS
> 
> The probably never to be written ending of the plotty bits. The Fyarl, Wolfram &amp; Hart, Rei? (Giles' Hellhounds? Whatevertheheck we don't see Buffy and Riley running into because they're offscreen?) They're all distractions, hired by a certain order of monks to make sure both the Sunnydale and LA crews, as the people most intimately affected by the spell they're about to perform, don't notice the lovely Miss D. Summers being inserted into their lives at midnight on July 3rd. 7-3-0. Rei especially is there to poke around and make people's minds a bit more receptive to it.
> 
> Blah blah blah vague ideas for alt season 5 episodes and Buffy not doing the tower plunge due to Dawn arriving earlier and thus them figuring things out earlier, but it also would've stood alone as hello there, AU Dawn-entrance.
> 
> Rei's fee: being told where to find Drusilla. She still kind of has a thing.


End file.
